Lebanese head of state Michel Aoun leaves the presidential palace on Sunday, October 30, at the end of his term, without a designated successor, during a popular ceremony organized by his supporters.

Hundreds of followers of the president, founder of the Free Patriotic Movement (CPL), allied with pro-Iranian Hezbollah, flocked in the morning to the presidential palace on the heights overlooking Beirut, to accompany him to his home.

"We came to escort the president at the end of his mandate, to tell him that we are with him and that we will continue the fight by his side," said Joumana Nahed, a teacher.

Michel Aoun's six-year term ends on Monday without the deputies managing to elect his successor because of their political differences, in a country in full economic collapse.

This prospect worries the international community, especially since the country will be managed by a government responsible for expediting current affairs, political divisions having also prevented the formation of a new cabinet since the spring legislative elections.

Parliament has already met four times over the past month in vain, neither the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah camp, the powerful armed movement which dominates political life in Lebanon, nor that of its opponents having a clear majority to impose a candidate.

The head of the Maronite Church Bechara Raï urged, on Sunday, the deputies to "dialogue and to preserve the quorum" during the next electoral sessions.

The patriarch considered that the deputies “contribute indirectly to the political, financial, social and economic crises in the country”.

"The political vacancy is not a destiny but a plot against Lebanon," he said.

A presidency marked by the economic collapse of the country

Brandishing portraits of President Aoun, 87, many dressed in orange, the color of the CPL, dozens of supporters of the former commander-in-chief of the army, whom they call "general", spent the night in tents near the palace of Baabda.

Among them, Nabil Rahbani, 59, points out that he had already camped near the presidential palace for the first time "between 1989 and 1990, before the Syrian air force dislodged the general from the Baabda palace".

At the end of the civil war, thousands of supporters of Michel Aoun, then head of a military government and who refused to hand over power to an elected president, had camped around the palace to support him, before he was dislodged by a Syrian military operation in October 1990.

Michel Aoun's mandate was marked by economic collapse, a cataclysmic explosion that ravaged Beirut on August 4, 2020, and an unprecedented popular uprising.

In the past, the election of a president has already led to violence or political crises, in a country governed by a community sharing of power, the presidency of the Republic being reserved for a Maronite Christian.

Two parties, the CPL and the Lebanese Forces, are fighting over the leadership of the Christian community.

With AFP

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