Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Nabieh Berri called on Thursday for holding a new session, the seventh of its kind, to elect a new president of the country.
The sixth session that was held earlier in the day failed to secure the 86 votes needed for the win of any of the candidates in the first round.
As many as 112 lawmakers from the 128-member parliament attended the session, giving 43 votes to lawmaker Michel Moawad and one vote for presidential candidates Suleiman Franjieh and Michel Daher for each.
Moawad is the favoured candidate of the parliamentary bloc of Lebanese Forces (LF) – a Christian group and the largest party in parliament, which pits itself as the opposition to the pro-Hizbollah bloc.
Blank ballots outnumbered votes given to Moawad as they reached 46.
A two-thirds vote is needed for a presidential candidate to secure a win in the first round of voting, and an absolute majority is needed in subsequent rounds.
By convention, Lebanon’s confessional system gives the presidency to a Maronite Christian, while the parliamentary speaker must be a Shiite Muslim and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim.
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