BEIRUT: The parliament members thwarted a bid to elect a top IMF official as Lebanon’s president on Wednesday, sharpening sectarian tensions and further dimming prospects for preventing a collapse of the state.
Four years since Lebanon went into a financial meltdown that marks its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war, parliament failed for a 12th time to elect someone to fill the post reserved for a Maronite Christian under the country’s sectarian system.
Neither Azour nor Suleiman Frangieh came close to winning the 86 votes needed to win in a first round vote. Azour, the IMF’s Middle East Director and an ex-finance minister, won the support of 59 of 128 lawmakers. Frangieh secured 51.
Hezbollah and its allies then withdrew from the session, denying the two-thirds quorum required for a second vote in which 65 votes are enough for victory.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri did not schedule a new session. It leaves Lebanon with no immediate way of filling a post vacant since the term of President Michel Aoun ended in October.
Azour thanked lawmakers who backed him, saying he hoped the will expressed by “the majority of deputies” would be respected.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hussein al-Haj Hassan said the group was ready for dialogue but sticking by Frangieh. Lawmaker George Adwan said the vote was “a major victory” because it showed Azour close to 65 votes.
But with parliament fractured, analysts say the logjam may now require the type of foreign intervention that has resolved past crises in Lebanon, including the 1989 deal mediated in Saudi Arabia that ended the civil war.
Lebanese political sources have anticipated that a new detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran could play out in Lebanon, but say they have not yet sensed pressure as other issues.
“You can’t stay in this situation,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center, noting forthcoming state decisions included agreeing a replacement for central bank governor Riad Salameh.
Lebanon has been without a fully empowered cabinet since parliamentary elections last year.
Azour, 57, has said he wants national unity and reforms.
He was finance minister from 2005 to 2008, a period of political conflict pitting a government backed by the West and Saudi Arabia against Hezbollah-led opponents aligned with Damascus. That crisis culminated in conflict in 2008. — Reuters
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