LEBANON:Lebanese legislators yesterday postponed the election of a new president because a boycott by opposition deputies deprived the chamber of a quorum of two-thirds of its members.
Speaker Nabih Berri instructed lawmakers of the government and opposition camps to meet again on October 23rd, after the feast ending the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
He hopes at that time deputies will adopt a consensus candidate. Parliament has until November 24th, when the term of incumbent Emile Lahoud ends, to appoint a new head of state.
Security was tight yesterday. The centre of Beiruit was sealed off by troops and police, and cleared for men many Lebanese consider to be a plague of politicians. Most shops, banks and businesses were shuttered and only media personnel with passes were allowed to enter the empty commercial district.
Half an hour before the session convened, a convoy of police-protected black SUVs with black windows whisked government deputies from the fortified Phoenicia Hotel to parliament square.
A few leading government figures arrived in limos sprouting antennae on their hind quarters.
Opposition deputies came in their own cars, paused at barriers to be identified by officers manning gates and were waved through. They entered the building but not the debating chamber, to make the point that the country's largest community, the Shias, and a significant proportion of Christians, were not at the gathering, thereby denying it legitimacy under Lebanon's "national pact", which calls for governance by consensus of all communities.
A few hundred metres from parliament, members of the Hizbullah-led opposition lounged in tents pitched last December in a camp-in protesting the government's refusal to form a national unity coalition and concede the veto to the opposition.
Although many tents were empty of protesters, who were away at work or at university, those who remained watched the proceedings on television. However, when asked their opinion of the morning's proceedings, they shrugged and said nothing.
At the heart of Martyrs Square, the site of pro-government demonstrations, the bullet-riddled bronze memorial to Lebanese who died in the independence struggle braved a stiff breeze blowing in from the sea.
Three youths hovered at the foot of the nearby tomb of former premier Rafik al-Hariri, whose assassination 955 days ago precipitated the country's ongoing crisis. Seven others have been murdered since then, several at moments when the two camps were about to connect and compromise.
The latest martyr was Antoine Ghanem, killed by a car bomb a week ago. Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, said he may have been assassinated because he was planning to meet Gen Michel Aoun, the opposition's leading Christian.
Few Lebanese believe the deeply divided camps will ever agree on a consensus president. In the absence of an accommodation, the US-backed government is threatening to elect its own candidate during the next meeting even if there is no quorum.
This would constitute a dangerous provocation because the opposition, which enjoys the support of Syria and Iran, would declare the action unconstitutional.