Michel Aoun is set to leave the Lebanese presidency on Sunday, 24 hours before the end of a mandate during which he has witnessed the economic collapse of the country, and leaves a power vacuum in the face of the inability of political forces to agree on a successor.
The six-year term of the 89-year-old Christian leader officially ends on Monday due to the inability of the Lebanese Parliament to find a replacement, with a government resigned since May and in the midst of what is considered by the World Bank as the worst economic crisis in the country since the second half of the 19th century.
Without a president, laws passed in the chamber cannot enter into force, nor can a prime minister be appointed, nor can cabinets be approved before parliamentary ratification.
This morning dozens of Aoun’s supporters began to gather at the Baabda Presidential Palace in Beirut to thank him for his efforts in trying to get the country out of the suffocating political and economic crisis in which it is immersed.
A caravan of supporters, dressed in the orange color that distinguishes the Free Patriotic Movement, the party founded by Aoun in 2005, is expected to accompany the veteran politician as he leaves his office for the last time and goes to his home in Rabié.
Aoun hopes that Parliament will eventually appoint his son-in-law Gebran Bassil as his successor, although there is concern in Lebanese political ranks because he has been under U.S. sanctions for corruption since November 2020.
It seems unlikely that the incumbent prime minister, Nayib Mikati, will take over the administration. For the president, Mikati has lost legitimacy since resigning from the government after the May elections. Bassil on Saturday accused Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri of making plans for the post-Aoun era to «auction» the president’s remaining powers. Mikati, by contrast, claims he has no intention of making any decisions that contravene the country’s constitution.
The elections, considered key for the future of the country, consecrated two big winners: the Lebanese Forces, which became the first Christian party in the Assembly with 19 deputies, and the anti-crisis protest movements. On the other hand, the Shiite militia party Hezbollah and its allies, including Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, lost their majority in Parliament.
Since then, the country has been in a blockade. Lebanese Forces, Aoun’s bitter enemy, has dissociated itself from Sunday’s celebrations. Its leader, Samir Geagea, said in comments reported by Arab News that what is happening today is a «moment of deep sadness».
«The most important thing is the stability of security in the country because that is all we have left now,» Geagea warned through his spokesman, Charles Jabbour.
