Beirut – Lebanon is on the brink of filling its presidential vacuum after two-and-a-half years without a leader.
On October 20, Saad Hariri, the leader of the Future Movement, endorsed his political opponent, former general Michel Aoun, for president. Hariri – the son of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005 – said that his endorsement was made in the interest of Lebanon’s overall well-being.
But some of his party’s most notable figures quickly condemned Hariri’s endorsement of Aoun, whom Hezbollah has supported from the beginning. The endorsement signals a weakening of the Future Movement.
The next parliamentary session to elect a president will be held on Monday. If Aoun moves into Baabda Palace as president, what will that mean for Lebanon? With a president finally in place, will the Lebanese government be able to take a more proactive role in confronting the major security and economic issues facing the country?
Twenty-seven years ago, when the Taif Agreement was signed to put an end Lebanon’s brutal 15-year civil war, Lebanon had the potential to thoroughly rebuild itself from the ground up. And it has been rebuilt in a physical sense, with the rubble left by the fighting in downtown Beirut replaced by skyscrapers.
But many Lebanese sense that the country’s political establishment remains largely the same – even when new alliances form between politicians once entirely at odds with each other, such as Saad Hariri and Michel Aoun.
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