Lebanese parliament re-elects veteran Berri as speaker for seventh term

Veteran Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri was on Tuesday re-elected for a seventh consecutive four-year term during the inaugural session of Lebanon’s new parliament.

During rowdy proceedings he secured the minimum of 65 votes in an uncontested poll in the 128-member chamber of deputies. This result contrasted sharply with his comfortable 98 votes in 2018 and reflects the deputies’ division into rival camps without a working majority.

As the temporary president read out the result, opposition to Mr Berri was demonstrated by 23 blank ballots and 40 papers bearing dissenting slogans. The right-wing Lebanese Forces, the largest Christian faction, cast ballots in the name of their bloc, “The Strong Republic,” to show disdain for Mr Berri.

Newcomer independents called for justice for the poor and an end to the rule of politicians such as Mr Berri, who have dominated Lebanon for three decades.

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Former defence minister Elias Bou Saab (55) was chosen as deputy speaker by 65 votes in a second round of voting for that post. Mr Bou Saab was the candidate of the Free Patriotic Movement founded by president Michel Aoun who has allied with Amal and Hizbullah since 2005. Although their relationship has been rocky in recent months, there seems to have been a trade in votes: Mr Berri for Mr Bou Saab.

Under Lebanon’s 1947 unwritten National Pact, a Shia is always speaker, a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni the prime minister and the deputy speaker a Greek Orthodox Christian.

Ahead of the session reformist deputies and thousands of Lebanese gathered at the port – devastated by a massive explosion which killed 219 and rendered homeless 300,000 in 2020 – and walked to parliament chanting “thawra” (revolution). Families of victims called for depoliticising the investigation into the blast and accountability for former ministers considered responsible for the carnage and destruction.

Born in 1938 to Lebanese Shia parents in Sierra Leone, Mr Berri was educated in south Lebanon and Beirut, where he earned a law degree from the Lebanese University and worked as a corporate lawyer. In 1980 he was chosen to lead the Amal (Hope) Movement, founded to promote the welfare of disadvantaged southern Shias. Along with Hizbullah, Amal resisted the 1978-2000 Israeli occupation of a wide belt of Lebanese territory north of the border. A billionaire businessman, Mr Berri has acted as conciliator among Lebanon’s factions.

On May 15th, Lebanese elected a new chamber of deputies, including 13 from the reformist and revolutionary cadres who took part in an October 2019 uprising demanding an end to decades of mismanagement and corruption and the overthrow of the sectarian system. Prospects for forming a government remain remote.