BEIRUT: Hezbollah Monday presented the March 14 coalition with a bitter choice: either to elect Free Patriotic Movement leader MPMichel Aoun as president or face an indefinite presidential vacuum.
The offer, made by Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem, is bound to further complicate the presidential crisis, which last month marked its first-year anniversary with no solution in sight.
But the Hezbollah proposal immediately drew a rebuke from aFuture Movement MP who rejected what he called “threats” made by Qassem over the presidential election deadlock. The Future Movement, along with its March 14 allies, supports Aoun’s rival, Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, for the presidency.
Referring to March 14, Qassem told a ceremony of the Baalbek municipality union in the Bekaa Valley: “The other side has two choices: either the election of Gen. Michel Aoun as president, or facing an indefinite [presidential] vacuum. God knows how long this will last.”