Parliament to convene Thursday over Aoun's letter

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called Monday for Parliament to convene on Thursday to discuss a letter sent to parliament by outgoing President Michel Aoun after he signed a decree "accepting the resignation" of the caretaker cabinet.

"The government is considered resigned according to Article 69 of the constitution," Berri told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, in remarks published Monday.

Aoun's letter says that Mikati was "uninterested" in forming a new cabinet to deal with Lebanon's myriad problems and called on him to resign.

Berri reiterated his intention to launch a dialogue to find a successor to Aoun. He stressed the importance of electing a new president, saying that "vacuum is unacceptable."

On Sunday, Free Patriotic chief Jebran Bassil had said in a tweet, that there is an intention not to form a new government and to seize the powers of the president.

He said that Berri by not calling for a session on Monday to take the necessary steps after Aoun's letter confirmed the intention to "impose an unconstitutional authority that lacks conformity to the national pact."

While it's not the first time that Lebanon's parliament has failed to appoint a successor by the end of the president's term, this will be the first time that there will be both no president and a caretaker cabinet with limited powers.

Although the constitution "doesn't say explicitly that the caretaker government can act if there is no president, logically, constitutionally, one should accept that because the state and institutions should continue to function according to the principle of the continuity of public services," constitutional expert Wissam Lahham said.