Lebanese parliament reelects longtime speaker in first session

Newly-elected reformist MPs said they would not compromise in their efforts to change the way Lebanon is run.

Lebanon’s new parliament has reelected Nabih Berri for a seventh term as Speaker of Parliament, during the first parliamentary session held since elections on May 15.

“I invite you to work together for a parliament that consolidates civil peace,” Berri told parliamentarians on Tuesday after his reelection. “We want a parliament that refuses political vacuums and fulfills its constitutional obligations.”

Berri received 65 votes from Lebanon’s 128 parliamentarians, less than the 98 he obtained at the start of his last term back in 2018. He has been a speaker of Parliament since 1992. In Lebanon’s fragile sectarian power-sharing system, the speaker is always a Shia Muslim.

Berri’s Amal Movement is a crucial ally of its fellow Shia party, Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Twenty-three legislators cast blank ballots, while the remaining 40 placed void protest votes. In the voided ballots, some parliamentarians attempted to highlight the failures of the Lebanese state by writing names that included assassinated Shia historian and analyst Lokman Slim, the victims of the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, female victims of sexual violence, and protesters who were beaten and lost their eyes during a protest movement in late 2019.

Lebanon’s parliamentary elections were the country’s first since the beginning of an ongoing economic crisis that has pulled about 80 percent of its population into poverty. Voters took out their anger on Hezbollah and its allies, who lost their majority in parliament.

Sixteen anti-establishment independent candidates gained seats in parliament, a 15-seat increase compared with the 2018 elections. They entered the parliament building in downtown Beirut for the parliamentary session with a small crowd of supporters waving Lebanese flags and cheering them on.

It is still unclear who will be tasked with forming the government, a process that could take months. Hezbollah and its allies now face a strengthened opposition of traditional anti-Iran parties, as well as the anti-establishment reformists.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES