Mashnouq Reiterates Lebanon to Have President before 2017

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq on Tuesday reiterated his belief that a president will be elected before the end of the year.

“I'm still convinced that a president will be elected before the end of this year,” Mashnouq said in an interview with NBN television.

The minister also denied reports of an internal vote among the members of the al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on the presidential nomination of Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun, describing what happened as “consultations over the political choices that must be endorsed.”

“We are not a movement of political waiting but rather a movement that takes decisions and it is our duty to discuss any choice that should be taken in the coming period,” Mashnouq explained.

Asked about Speaker Nabih Berri's warning that failure to strike a political settlement would lead to a constituent assembly or even a civil war, Mashnouq described Berri as “a political and national security valve no matter what he says.”

Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah.

The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.