Berri reelected as speaker with 65 votes as opposition cast message-filled ballots

Speaker Nabih Berri was reelected Tuesday for his post with the votes of 65 MPs while 23 blank votes were casted and 40 others were canceled for containing political messages rather than a candidate's name.

Heavy gunfire erupted in some Lebanese regions after the result was announced.

The Lebanese Forces bloc cast ballots containing the name of their bloc, the Strong Republic, to stress that they did not vote for Berri.

The MPs of the October 17 uprising and other independents meanwhile cast ballots carrying political messages such as "Justice for the Port Victims", "Justice for the Victims of Death Boats," "Justice for Those Injured by Parliament Police", "Justice for Raped Women" and "Lokman Slim".

Berri has been reelected for a seventh four-year term. His reelection was practically guaranteed seeing as his Amal Movement and its ally Hizbullah won all 27 Shiite seats in the May 15 parliamentary elections.

A deputy speaker and a parliament bureau will also be elected in the session. MP Elias Bou Saab of the Free Patriotic Movement and MP Ghassan Skaff, who is close to Druze leader Walid Jumblat, are competing for the deputy speaker post.

The new legislature is being ushered in as Lebanon remains in the grip of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the ruling class, which has been running the country since the end of the civil war.

Elected on May 15, the new parliament is deeply divided with no coalition holding majority seats in the 128-member legislature. Hizbullah and its allies lost the majority they had held since 2018, and now hold 61 seats — four short of an absolute majority.

The 13 independent candidates, drawn from the 2019 protest movement, the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces had said they would not vote for Berri, leaving him with a much slimmer support, mainly from Shiite parties.

The presence of the independent lawmakers in the legislature is a major achievement — they went into the vote fragmented and faced intimidation and threats by entrenched mainstream parties.

It sends a strong message to politicians who have for decades held on to their seats and continue to do so despite the economic meltdown, which has impoverished Lebanon and triggered the biggest wave of emigration since the 1975-90 civil war.

Tuesday's session is expected to reflect the legislature's divisions between pro- and anti-Hizbullah lawmakers who will likely find it difficult to work together to form a new government and enact desperately needed reforms.