The lira is reaching a new, unprecedented low

For the 11th time... the House of Representatives fails to elect a new president for Lebanon

An exchange employee holds notes in Lebanese pounds at a shop in Beirut.

Reuters

Yesterday, the Lebanese Parliament failed to elect a new president for the country, for the 11th time, because no candidate could obtain two-thirds of the votes of the representatives.

Today, the 11th parliamentary session was held to elect a president in Lebanon, headed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

The session was held after the completion of the quorum, which requires the presence of 86 deputies out of the total number of deputies in the parliament, which number 128 deputies, and the number of voters reached 110.

Berri said that Representative Michel Moawad got 34 votes against 37 white papers, seven votes for Essam Khalifa and 15 void papers, and the second session did not take place due to a lack of quorum.

The presidential candidate needs to obtain the votes of two-thirds of the deputies in the 128-member parliament in the first round of voting.

And 10 previous parliamentary sessions were held to elect a president of the republic, the last of which was on December 15, and all of them failed.

It is noteworthy that the term of former President Michel Aoun ended on the 31st of last October, and Lebanon entered a stage of presidential vacancy.

In Beirut, the families of those arrested in the port explosion case, yesterday afternoon, carried out a sit-in in front of the Palace of Justice, to demand the release of their detained children.

The people carried banners calling for justice for their children and the families of the victims of the explosion.

A number of deputies participated in their sit-in.

The people called on the judiciary to "be fair with everyone and to release their families and children immediately," declaring that "they have also become victims of the file and political and judicial disputes."

On the financial front, dealers in the Lebanese exchange market told Reuters that the Lebanese pound recorded yesterday, a new unprecedented low at 50,000 pounds to the dollar, which implies a decline in its value by more than 95% since the collapse of the country's financial system in 2019.

The lira was pegged to the dollar at a rate of 1507 in 1993, a peg that lasted until 2019 when decades of waste, mismanagement and corruption caused a financial crisis.

The largest paper in circulation, the 100,000-pound note, which was worth $67, is now worth only two dollars.

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