Beirut, Jan 9 (EFE).- The Lebanese parliament Thursday elected Army Chief Joseph Aoun as the new president, ending more than two years of a political deadlock that had left the country without a head of state.
According to house speaker Nabih Berri, the military chief received the support of 99 out of the 128 members of the parliament. “The parliament announces Joseph Aoun as president,» Berri said.
The new president pledged to carry out reconstruction of the infrastructure destroyed by the Israeli air offensive. He also vowed to limit the possession of arms to the state and outline a defense strategy to deter Israel.
Aoun vowed to reconstruct “what the Israeli army destroyed in the south, east, and (Beirut’s southern) suburbs,” referencing the regions most affected by the Israeli military campaign between September and November last year.
«We will also discuss a comprehensive defense strategy at the diplomatic, economic, and military levels that allows the Lebanese state to oust the Israeli occupation and deter its aggression,» Aoun said during his victory speech in parliament, shortly after being elected.
The current chief of the Lebanese Army takes office as president less than a month and a half after Lebanon reached a ceasefire agreement with Israel, which stipulates the withdrawal of the Shia military group Hezbollah from the border areas and a reinforcement of the presence of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
In this context, Aoun reiterated on Thursday his commitment to ensuring that weapons are concentrated in the hands of the state.
The main objective of the Army’s deployment in southern Lebanon will be to ensure that no non-state entity possesses weapons, mainly Hezbollah, as stipulated by the UN Security Council resolution that ended the previous war in 2006.
Lebanon has been without a president since October 2022, when Michel Aoun’s term ended. Since then, political factions have been unable to reach a consensus on a successor, leading to more than a dozen failed voting sessions.
The latest parlimentart vote comes amid mounting pressure from both international and domestic actors to elect a president before the 60-day ceasefire with Israel expires later this month.
In parliament, when the live count reached 85 votes for Aoun, the two-thirds majority that indisputably grants him the presidency, those present broke into applause, while fireworks, gunfire into the air, and ship sirens immediately began to resonate throughout Beirut.
The 60-year-old military chief joined the army at the age of 19 as a volunteer and rose through the ranks until being appointed in March 2017 as the new commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces, a term that parliament extended for one more year at the end of last November.
Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s term expired in October 2022, as political factions were unable to agree on a consensus candidate, leading to the failure of more than a dozen presidential election sessions in parliament.
The house met this morning for the first time in a year and a half, but in the first session Aoun fell short of the 85 votes, getting only 71, which led to the calling of a second session in the afternoon. EFE
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