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The latest of the presidential election sessions will be resumed om the 14th of June in the parliament building in downtown Beirut, this sessions is the first since about 3 months when the 11th session ended similarly to the 10 that preceded it, no clear cut result no majority for neither camps, regardless of Michel Mouawad’s usual 35 to 45 votes in the previous sessions as well as in the 11th, it brought nothing new; the usual blank papers and a couple of ‘statement’ papers here and there.
However with Jihad Azour entering the race with seemingly a higher number than Mouawad, speaker Nabih Berri felt obliged to call for a session; Berri has previously stated after the conclusion of the last session that he will not call for any new session unless there are two or more candidates with a good chance of winning or ‘serious’ candidates , the term coined with this particular presidential election.
How will the results pan out once the votes are counted is up to speculation, however we can say for certain that there are three scenarios that this will go towards.
The first scenarios is the loss of quorum before the session starts, with Jihad Azour gaining momentum after the backing of all of Mouawad’s votes along with the 18 or so votes that the free patriotic movement should be able to chip in and with a number of new voters not previously voting for Mouawad but opting to vote for Azour, mainly some sunni independent MPs Azour is poised to pass the 55 vote margin and could surpass 60 votes if the socialist progressive party decides to go with Azour, and with Franjieh’s total not looking that it will pass 45 votes the March 8 camp lead by Amal party and Hezbollah might choose to not even entertain the idea of showing up and thus not providing the 86 MP’s required in order for a session to be called in fear of their candidate having a “weak showing”; a loss by 20 votes which will inevitably dent his candidacy race if not ruin it altogether.
The second scenario is that quorum will be upheld for the first session but Franjieh will not get a vote rather his backers will hold back his name a move that has been done before as a way of not dueling with the other candidate in terms of votes, absurd in most countries but not so much in Lebanon. In this scenario Azour will get his 55 to 65 votes projected and blank papers will number anywhere from 40 to 60 papers with the blank votes of any undecided MPs mainly sunni and christian independents will get lost in the blanks with no way of telling who refrained from voting because of a general agreement to back down for the sake of franjieh or votes who have no better choice between the two front runners .
The third scenario would a combination but with a twist so to speak of the previous two; quorum will be upheld, Franjieh and Azour will duel in the voting box, results will be announced and quorum for the second session would be lost with the probable no show of the Franjieh camp for the second session specially if Azour hits the 65 votes marks required for the second session to be declared winner.