Mashnouq Says Mustaqbal Won't Renounce Ties with Berri despite Disagreement

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq stressed Wednesday that al-Mustaqbal Movement will maintain its ties with Speaker Nabih Berri despite the latest tensions.

“No matter how much we disagree over the presidency with Speaker Berri, we will not renounce our ties with him,” several TV networks quoted Mashnouq as saying.

Al-Mustaqbal leader ex-PM Saad Hariri is reportedly on the verge of announcing his support for the presidential nomination of Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun while Berri is one of the main opponents of Aoun's bid.

On Tuesday, Berri's aide and Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil confirmed that the speaker's Development and Liberation bloc would “vote against” Aoun in any presidential election session.

Also on Tuesday, several officials of Berri's AMAL Movement slammed the latest Hariri-Aoun rapprochement as a return to the “1943 bilateral Sunni-Maronite powersharing format.”

MP Alain Aoun of the FPM announced Monday that Hariri will announce his endorsement of Aoun “this week.”

Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum.

Hariri launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah.

The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.