Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi announced Thursday that a strong president is a president who draws strength from “his people and our support for him.”
“We congratulate the Lebanese that we will have a president on Monday, after two and a half years” of presidential vacuum, al-Rahi said during a dinner banquet for Lebanon's Catholic Media Center.
Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun was tipped to become president after al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri formally endorsed him last Thursday.
Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum.