Noticias

The Kataeb Party Monday called for the immediate election of a president and urged teachers to start grading official exams, following a union announcement that they would boycott grading until the new salary scale is passed.

In a statement after the weekly meeting of its political bureau, the party said that "in light of the dangerous events in Iraq, and the spread of fundamentalist movements in the Arab world," electing a president was necessary so that Lebanon's democratic political institutions would function normally.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai said Friday that the lawmakers’ failure to elect a new president was a grave issue that targeted the people and their interests.

“I told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that holding the presidential election is not a matter of luxury or a daily political affair that can be taken lightly,” Rai said while visiting the offices of the Maronite Pension Fund.

Presidential hopeful and Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun said after talks with Speaker Nabih Berri Wednesday that his bloc was still mulling whether to attend a legislative session in Parliament next week.

Aoun’s move came as Berri chastised and threatened to take unspecified measures against MPs who boycott Parliament, amid growing fears that the vacuum in the presidency would spread to Parliament and the rest of the government.

Change and Reform bloc MP Alain Aoun said that the parliamentary polls scheduled for later this year should be held even if based on the old election law.

“The priority is, of course, for holding a presidential election, but if the [presidential election] is obstructed, we must hold the parliamentary polls,” Aoun said in an interview to Al-Liwaa daily to be published Monday.

The UN Security Council expressed "disappointment and concern" Thursday that an election of a new Lebanese president has not occurred and demanded that polls be held without delay.

In a unanimous declaration, the Council's 15 member states urged the country's parliament "to uphold Lebanon's long standing democratic tradition and to work to ensure that presidential elections take place as soon as possible and without external interference."

Lebanon's President Michel Sleiman urged squabbling politicians on Saturday to choose a successor to his post before the end of his term as politicians from the Western-backed March 14 alliance flocked to parliament in a show of force against presidential void.

During a farewell speech marking the end of his six year term, Sleiman also said that dialogue was the only way to overcome deep divisions in the country, which is struggling to cope with political and security spillover from Syria's civil war.