Roundup: Lebanon marks full year without president amid regional crises

Lebanon has been without a president for a whole year after parliament failed for 23 consecutive times to elect a successor to Michel Suleiman whose six-year term ended on May 25, 2014.

According to the constitution, the government takes charge of running the country in the absence of president, who should be elected by two thirds of the 128-seat parliament in the first round of voting and by a simple majority in the following rounds.

However, the quorum required for the parliament to convene is two thirds of the seats and this has not been achieved due to the boycott of Hezbollah and lawmaker Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement that backs the election of Aoun to the post.

The Western-backed March 14 Camp backs the candidacy of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, while the centrist Democratic Gathering led by lawmaker Walid Jumblatt backs the candidacy of its member Henri Helou to the post.

According to a power sharing pact, the president should be a Christian Maronite, the speaker a Shiite Muslim and the premier a Sunni Muslim.

The presidential vacuum resulted in disorder in cabinet work as any decision should be approved unanimously by all 24 ministers.

The vacuum also hinders the work of parliament as some blocs consider that no legislative work should be exercised by the house in the absence of president, and that the only supposed duty of the house is to elect a president.

It also coincided with the Syrian crisis and its repercussions on the Lebanese scene with the high influx of Syrian refugees, which prompted a dialogue between the mostly Sunni Almustaqbal Movement and the Shiite Hezbollah in an effort to diffuse the historical Sunni-Shiite tension and immunize Lebanon from the regional fires.

However, security threats were on the rise since the al-Qaida linked al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group overran the eastern border town of Arsal in August 2014 and engaged in a five-day fierce battle with the Lebanese army before withdrawing to Syria after abducting at least 35 soldiers and policemen.

The al-Nusra executed four soldiers while the IS beheaded another one. The government has been negotiating through a Qatari mediator for the release of the remaining captives, while the army has fortified its positions all along the eastern border and engaged with the militants entrenched alongside the border.

Many political analysts see no light ahead to end the vacuum, though all political powers insist on the necessity to elect a new president to confront all the economic and security threats facing Lebanon.

Despite the efforts of head of the Christian Maronite Church Cardinal Mar Bechars Boutros el Rahi to bring the Maronite political leaders into a consensus on president, analysts expressed fear that the continuing vacuum would result in more internal disputes amid an ever tenser regional situation.

Georges Alam, a political analyst, said the political divisions in Lebanon are "related to the Syrian crisis, the regional role of Hezbollah and other issues including Syrian refugees."

"All these issues are behind the Lebanese disagreement, add to it the sectarian situation," Alam said. "Separating the presidential election from the regional influences is impossible."

"The link between the local actors and the regional main powers in Saudi Arabia and Iran complicates the presidential elections and with the Yemeni crisis, the situation is even more complicated now," he added.

Alam believes that the "outcome of the presidential election depends on the new mapping of the region unless a direct U.S. push backed by a European decision to press on the Saudis and the Iranians to facilitate the election." Endit