President Michel Aoun
...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah...
vacated the presidential palace on Sunday, amid acclaim from his supporters, a day before his mandate expires without a designated successor, which threatens a new power vacuum in the crisis-torn country.
A few thousand well-wishers gathered to pay tribute to Aoun, a former army chief and the founder of the Free Patriotic Movement
Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic...
FPM supporters, some brandishing portraits of the outgoing head of state widely referred to as "General", flocked to the presidential palace in the hills above the capital Beirut, where some had spent the night in tents, to accompany him to his private home.
"We have come to escort the president at the end of his mandate, to tell him that we are with him and that we will continue the struggle by his side," said teacher Joumana Nahed.
Lebanese politicians have tried but failed four times in a month to agree on electing a successor after Aoun's six-year term ends Monday, stoking fears of a deepening political crisis.
The term of Aoun, who is in his late 80s, was marred by mass popular protests, a severe economic crisis and currency collapse, and the August 2020 portside blast of ammonium nitrate that killed hundreds and laid waste to swathes of the capital.
Neither the Hezbollah camp, the powerful armed movement which dominates political life in Leb
 ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
, nor its opponents have the clear majority to impose a candidate to succeed him.
Lebanon is being run by a caretaker government as political divisions have prevented the formation of a new cabinet ever since legislative elections in the spring. At the beginning of his farewell speech on Sunday, Aoun announced that he has signed a decree accepting the caretaker cabinet's "resignation," a move described by many constitutional experts, observers and political parties as nonexistent in the constitution.
This comes at a time Lebanon has yet to enact most of the reforms required for it to access billions of dollars in loans from the International Monetary Fund.
Some at the palace Sunday recalled previous turbulence in the country that was torn by the bloody 1975-1990 civil war and decades of military intervention by neighbor Syria.
Nabil Rahbani, 59, said he had camped outside the presidential palace once before, "between 1989 and 1990, before the Syrian air force dislodged the general from Baabda Palace."
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