BEIRUT – Lebanon’s parliament has elected Michel Aoun as the President of Lebanon, ending a political stand-off that has left the post empty for more than two years.
President Aoun, an 81-year-old former army general, secured 83 votes in the 128-seat chamber when MPs convened for their 46th attempt to choose a head of state.
The Lebanese constitution stipulates that a president must secure at least two thirds of MPs (86 deputies) in the first vote, or 65 votes in another process.
Michel Aoun was immediately sworn in as Lebanon’s 13th president.
Outgoing UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, welcomed Aoun’s election and said that he hoped that Lebanese parties would now continue to work in a spirit of unity and in the national interest.
Aoun, is an ally of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia and political party backed by Iran that has helped Syrian President Bashar Assad survive a five-year civil war on Lebanon’s border.
Aoun’s election drew immediate praise from a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
The adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, described the choice as a victory for Iran and its allies in Lebanon, because the Lebanese president is “a very significant ring in the chain of the Islamic resistance,” according to Iran’s government-owned Tasnim News Agency.
Aoun, in his first speech after becoming president, pledged to fight corruption and protect Lebanon from the fires raging around it, referring to the Syrian civil war.
He also promised to liberate contested territory under “Israeli occupation,” according to Hezbollah’s Al Manar-TV, apparently referring to territory Israel considers part of the Golan Heights, which it conquered from Syria during the 1967 war.
Lebanon has been without a head of state since May 2014, when then-president Michel Suleiman’s six-year term expired. Since then, 45 sessions to elect a new leader have failed because of political infighting.
