The Lebanese Parliament elected on Thursday army commander Joseph Aoun as the country's 14th president after two and a half years of vacancy. Aoun also took the constitutional oath.
Aoun secured 99 votes, two-thirds of the MPs, enough to be elected Lebanese president, in a second voting session. In the first round of the vote, 71 out of 128 lawmakers voted in favor of the army commander, short of the required 86. Twenty ballots were declared null and void.
The 60-year-old seems to have the support of the United States along with influential regional power Saudi Arabia, key to leverage tensions between the Iran-backed Hezbollah faction and its adversaries, which have previously led to the derailment of a dozen voting attempts.
