General Suleiman may become President of Lebanon

At the end of this week, Lebanese politicians will again try to elect the country's president. The elections were scheduled for last Thursday and were postponed again. This is already the sixth postponement since September of this year. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced that elections will take place on December 7.

Lebanon needs a compromise figure for the post of head of state, acceptable both to the parliamentary majority and to the opposition sympathetic to Syria and Iran, represented by the Shiite Hezbollah. The presidency will most likely be occupied by the 59-year-old commander of the Lebanese army, General Michel Suleiman. The Al-Mustaqbal ("Future") parliamentary majority bloc, led by the son of assassinated ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Saad, agreed to amend the constitution to allow the general to run for president. Now in Lebanon the election of current senior officials to the post of head of the country is prohibited. The official opposition presidential candidate, General Michel Aoun, also spoke out for Suleiman.

Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, 71, left office on November 23. For the first time since the 1975-1990 civil war, a power vacuum has emerged in Lebanon. Yesterday, the opposition, at a mass rally in the center of Beirut, spoke in favor of a political settlement of the crisis “through the creation of a coalition government that reflects the true balance of power in the country.” The Lebanese President is elected by a two-thirds vote of parliamentarians, with a turnout of at least 85 out of 127 legislators. The ruling coalition has only 68 seats, and it cannot provide a quorum in the event of a boycott of the elections by the opposition.

Katerina LABETSKAYA