Fadlallah says Berri's call for session proves Franjieh camp not afraid

MP Hassan Fadlallah of Hezbollah on Tuesday said that Speaker Nabih Berri’s call for a presidential election session refutes the rival camp’s claims that “there won’t be a session because we don’t guarantee the success of our candidate.”

“We have a host of constitutional choices and we are discussing these choices with our allies and friends to take the appropriate stance in the coming session,” Fadlallah added.

“These choices are from within the constitutional texts and are diverse, and any choice that we will resort to in the coming session or in other sessions will have a sufficient number of MPs,” the lawmaker went on to say.

A candidate needs two thirds of parliament’s votes to be declared president from the first electoral round. A candidate can be elected with 65 votes in the second round but two thirds of parliament’s members need to be present during that vote. Accordingly, any political camp might strip the second round of the needed quorum if it senses that its candidate would certainly lose.

Fadlallah noted Tuesday that “when the Lebanese constitution stipulated a two-thirds quorum, that was aimed at securing the broadest Lebanese Christian-Islamic participation in the election of the president, and to tell the parliamentary blocs that they are obliged to reach an understanding.”

“No one has the two-thirds majority and so far no one has 65 votes,” Fadlallah added.

“The available choice today to exit the current situation is dialogue among the parliamentary blocs or the political forces that form these parliamentary blocs, in order to reach an understanding over a president who enjoys the two-thirds quorum and, if possible, the two-thirds majority,” the Hezbollah legislator said.