Lebanese lawmakers gathered at the country’s parliament building in Beirut Sunday to elect Michel Sleiman as president in a first step towards ending a crippling political crisis that has left their country without a president since November.

The 59-year-old Lebanese army chief will give up his army post and be sworn in as president during a special session attended by a host of international dignitaries.

Click here to find out more about Gen. Sleiman's career.

The election comes six months after the presidential post was vacated by Syrian ally Emile Lahoud, a period during which Lebanon’s competing sectarian leaders repeatedly failed to elect a successor.

With each faction accusing the other of serving external masters, the Lebanese political crisis is widely viewed as an extension of rifts between Shia and Sunni Muslim powers as well as the confrontation pitting the West – especially the United States – against Iran and Syria.

Sunday’s ceremony is being billed as a “reconciliation wedding” by a population weary of their politicians’ inability to end the country’s crippling power standoff.

Indeed the guest list at the ceremony reflects the country’s rapprochement hopes. The 200-odd dignitaries at the event include Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa, a US congressional delegation, the foreign ministers of France, Syria and Iran as well as Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

It was Qatari mediation during talks in Doha last week that brokered a deal to end a recent bloody confrontation between pro-and anti-Syrian groups that killed 65 people and plunged Lebanon to the brink of civil war.   

A neutral figure in a divided nation

While in most countries the election of a military chief as president would raise alarm bells, in Lebanon, Sleiman is viewed as a compromise candidate for both, the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority led by Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, as well as the opposition led by Hezbollah.

But while the two opposing blocs have long agreed on Sleiman, they have repeatedly failed to agree on the makeup of a new cabinet, postponing the presidential vote 19 times since Lahoud’s departure.

A Maronite Christian with a 30-year military career, Sleiman is nevertheless seen as a neutral political figure.

“The army is my life and I always tried to shelter it from political and denominational conflicts in a country where the political organization rests on a denominational basis,” Sleiman told FRANCE 24 in April. “I will not allow it to be divided.”

Like all the public office of the country, the Lebanese army is built on denominational model that is designed to maintain a power balance between the country’s 18 religious sects.

But the pressures of uniting Lebanon are immense. Days before his election, Sleiman warned against pinning all of Lebanon’s political hopes on his shoulders. "I cannot save the country on my own," he told the pro-opposition daily As-Safir. "This mission requires the efforts of all.”