Lawmakers in crisis-hit Lebanon failed to elect a new president for an eighth time, despite the deepening impact of the political deadlock on the country’s economic woes.
Lebanon has been without a head of state for a month after President Michel Aoun left office at the end of October with no successor.
Only 111 of parliament’s 128 lawmakers showed up for the vote.
Some MPs wrote in mock choices on their ballots, with one vote cast for Brazil’s leftist president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Parliament is “not shouldering its responsibilities”, charged lawmaker Antoine Habchi of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian party opposed to Hezbollah.
Electing a president, naming a prime minister and forming a government can take months or even years of political horse-trading.
Lebanon can ill-afford a prolonged power vacuum as it grapples with a financial crisis dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern history, with a currency in free fall, severe electricity shortages and soaring poverty rates.
The country’s caretaker government is unable to enact the sweeping reforms demanded by international lenders as a condition for releasing billions of dollars in bailout loans.
Hezbollah opposes Moawad’s candidacy, and the Iran-backed group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah called last month for a president ready to stand up to the United States.
Former president Aoun’s own election in 2016 followed a more than two-year vacancy at the presidential palace as lawmakers made 45 failed attempts before reaching a consensus on his candidacy.
Parliament is expected to convene for a new attempt to elect a president on December 8.
“AFP”