Lebanese lawmakers elected army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a more than two-year vacancy and marking a step towards lifting the war-battered country out of financial meltdown. Aoun,

Lebanon’s parliament chose the country’s army commander, Joseph Aoun, as head of state, filling a more than two-year-long presidential vacuum.

The election of army commander Gen. Joseph Aoun garnered rare consensus among the Lebanese, backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia in the first presidential election for Lebanon following the fall of the Assad regime.