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LF leader Geagea says blank votes aim to disrupt presidential elections

28-04-2014 | 06:06

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LF leader Geagea says blank votes aim to disrupt presidential elections

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Lebanese Forces leader Samir Gegea said on Monday that blank voting slips aim to disrupt the presidential elections and to boycott the second round of voting.

"The other party [March 8 coalition] is keen to disrupt Wednesday's parliamentary session," Geagea said in a press conference in Maarab, noting that no party is entitled to randomly use this right.

"The election of a president who does not represent Lebanon's interests is worse than political vacuum," he said.

The LF leader added that the March 8 coalition should nominate a candidate for the upcoming elections and subsequently submit his program.

Lebanese parliamentarians failed to elect a new president last Wednesday in a first round of voting deadlocked by domestic rifts and the war in Syria, which has polarized Middle East states that traditionally broker Lebanon's political deals.

Leading candidate Samir Geagea, a former warlord who spent 11 years in prison after Lebanon's civil war, fell well short of the required two-thirds support in a vote that could be the first of many attempts to agree on a successor to President Michel Sleiman.

Geagea won 48 of the votes cast by 124 deputies. His total was eclipsed by 52 blank papers submitted by political opponents determined to block his campaign but who have yet to rally behind any rival candidate.

The stalemate was no surprise in a country whose sectarian divisions have been deepened by the three-year-old war in neighboring Syria and which has frequently relied on regional powers to impose a settlement over bickering political factions.

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