DPA
Beirut
The Lebanese parliament elected armed forces commander Joseph Aoun as the country’s new president on Thursday in a second round of voting.
Aoun received 99 votes in a second vote from the 128-member parliament. A first vote in the morning produced no result.
"Today a new phase in Lebanon’s history has begun and I will be the first servant to preserve the charter and the national accord document,” Aoun said in addressing the parliament after he was sworn in.
"We will invest in the army to control and secure the borders in the south and demarcate them in the east and north, fight terrorism, implement international resolutions and prevent Israeli attacks,” Aoun said in his inauguration speech.
"I will work to confirm the state’s right to monopolize the carrying of weapons... Interference in the judiciary is prohibited, and there are no immunities for criminals or corrupt people, and there are no mafias, drug smuggling or money laundering,” he added.
The pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia and its allied Amal movement did not vote for Aoun in the first round.
It was the parliament’s 13th attempt to elect a president.
Some lawmakers who abstained from voting for Aoun argued that a constitutional amendment is required for his eligibility as president.
The current constitution bars individuals who have held high government positions within the past two years from assuming the presidency.
The small Mediterranean country has been without a head of state for more than two years after Michel Aoun - not related to commander Aoun - left office as planned at the end of October 2022.
Since then, the country with around 6 million residents has been led by Prime Minister Najib Mikati in a caretaker capacity. The election of a president has repeatedly failed due to power struggles within the political elite.
The session took place in the presence of foreign and Arab ambassadors and French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian.
As military chief, Aoun is currently also responsible for monitoring the ceasefire agreed between Hezbollah and Israel in November. Aoun, who turns 61 on Friday, comes from a Maronite Christian family in a suburb east of Beirut.
During the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, he began a career at the military academy. He later rose to the rank of general and in 2017 became commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
He has studied political science and international relations but has not held any political office to date.
He is said to be the preferred candidate of the United States and France, among others, and of several influential Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Aoun is married and has two children.
Lebanon is deeply divided along religious lines and power has been divided there for decades according to a proportional system. The president is therefore always a Christian, the head of government a Sunni and the speaker of parliament a Shiite.
Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, has played an influential role for years in imposing a president loyal to Iran and neighbouring Syria, which was led by the recently ousted Al-Assad regime.
Hezbollah had supported its presidential candidate Suleiman Frangieh until recently.
Frangieh announced on Wednesday evening that he was withdrawing his candidacy, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.
The surprising agreement on Aoun is a sign that Hezbollah’s political influence in the country has declined.
It has been severely weakened after the war with Israel, in which its leader Hassan Nasrallah and several other high-ranking officials were killed.