BEIRUT - Since the civil war which erupted in 1975 and ended in 1990, Lebanon has not had a calm transition of presidential power.

Before then, five presidents carried out their terms and succeeded each other in relative calm: Bechara el Khouri (1943-1952 - the National Assembly amended the Constitution in 1949 so he could serve another term, but economic strife and massive demonstrations over Khouri's corruption forced him to resign in 1952); Camille Chamoun (1952-1958); Fouad Chehab (1958-1964); Charles Helou (1964-1970) and the final smooth installation of Suleiman Franjieh in 1970.

Since then, the handing on of presidency has brought chronic problems, starting with that of Elias Sarkis.

By March 1976, Lebanon's civil war had been raging for a year. Right-wing Christians battled left-wing Muslims and Palestinians. More than 20,000 Lebanese had been killed.

The presidency of Suleiman Franjieh was largely impotent. That month, army Brigadier-General Abdel-Aziz al-Ahdab staged a coup to oust Franjieh, whose term was not due to expire until September.

The coup failed, but a change in leadership won Syrian support. In April, Syrian tanks crossed the Lebanese border for the first time, sending a signal to the Lebanese National Assembly to amend the constitution and replace Franjieh.

On May 8, 1976, while mortar rounds exploded and assault-gun fire raked the Esseily Villa neighbourhood where the session was held, 66 members of the Assembly elected Elias Sarkis president.

He was a conservative lawyer and former governor of Lebanon's Central Bank, a Maronite Christian, and most importantly, Syria's choice - but not that of the Muslim-Palestinian alliance. Twenty-nine members of the assembly boycotted the session.

In 1982 there followed Bashir and Amin Gemayel. Israel's invasion of Lebanon was three months old in August of that year.

Israel had invaded to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization from south Lebanon and install the candidate it favoured for the presidency - Bashir Gemayel, 34-year-old leader of the Christian Phalange militia.

He was the only candidate, and was elected on August 23, under the shadow of Israeli tanks looming over Beirut.

Again the assembly's usual home in Beirut was not safe. The session was moved to the military academy barracks at Fayadayeh, an area five kilometres east of Beirut, controlled by the Israeli army.

Muslim politicians called for a boycott. But enough legislators turned up to give Gemayel the presidency on the second ballot, with 57 votes for and five blank votes on a bare quorum.

Just 22 days after his election and nine days before taking office, Gemayel was assassinated. His 40-year-old brother, Amin, a member of the Assembly for 10 years, was elected president, again at the military academy, but this time with 77 votes.

As Amin Gemayel's term was ending in August 1988, the Lebanese National Assembly failed to secure a quorum to elect a new president. Israel had since withdrawn from parts of southern Lebanon.

Christian Leaders and Syria, which had 25,000 troops in Lebanon, could not agree on a compromise candidate. A constitutional vacuum, and outbreaks of bloody violence, ensued.

Muslims set up their own interim government under Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss, who had been Gemayel's prime minister. Michel Aoun, a Christian army general opposed to Syria's presence, set up a military government of himself and two army officers.

As the crisis lengthened, 62 members of the National Assembly agreed to meet in the Saudi town of Taif to resolve Lebanon's 14-year civil war and redraw the country's political map.

In October 1989, they reached an accord that reduced Christian power to parity with Muslims (from a 55 per cent majority in the assembly) and called on a limited redeployment of Syrian forces to the eastern part of the country.

Aoun, opposing the agreement, dissolved the assembly. But by then he had lost his power. The assembly met - in a remote mountain village - on 5 November 1989, and elected Rene Moawad president with 52 votes of just 58 deputies assembled.

Moawad took office immediately. Seventeen days later, he was assassinated as a 400-pound bomb blew up his car and killed 23 other people as he was marking the country's Independence Day.

Elias Hrawi, a wealthy Maronite from the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle, was elected president on November 24 with what amounted to a minority vote of the National Assembly: 47 votes of 53 legislators, in an assembly of 99 representatives.

To make the quorum, eight legislators who had fled the civil war to Paris were flown in for the vote and driven, by Syrian intelligence agents, to the town of Chatura, in the eastern Bekaa valley, where the Assembly's makeshift session was held.

By then, Syria - Lebanon's power broker - had decided to oust Aoun, who sought exile in Paris until May 2005. Hrawi's presidency was scheduled to end in November 1995 - but it did not.

The National Assembly gathered, this time in its own building in Beirut, and voted overwhelmingly to amend the constitution, under Syrian instructions, so Hrawi could serve three more years. The precedent had been set in 1949 with the extension of Bechara el- Khoury's presidency.

In 1998 Syria, which had at the time some 30 troops in Lebanon, gave its blessing to then Lebanese Army Lietenant-General Emile Lahoud to be Lebanon's next president.

Again, the assembly had to amend the constitution, which forbade a state employee from acceding to the presidency unless he resigned his post at least six months earlier. The amendment passed easily.

Lahoud was elected. In 2004, the assembly again amended the constitution to lengthen his term by three years. It now ends next Saturday, November 24.

Constitutionally, the 128-member assembly (it grew from 99 as a result of the 1989 Taif accord) must elect a new president before then.

So far, several attempts by legislators to settle on a compromise candidate have failed. -DPA