Lebanon President Aoun asks PM designate Hariri to form goverment or leave
Shafaq News/ Lebanese president Michel Aoun called on the prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri on Wednesday to visit the presidential palace to form a new cabinet immediately or else make way for someone who is able to.
“If prime minister-designate Hariri finds himself unable to form a government ... he should make way for those who are,” Aoun said in a televised speech after inviting him to Baabda palace for talks.
Aoun and Hariri have been at loggerheads over government formation since his nomination in October.
Lebanon is in the throes of a deep financial crisis and a new government could implement much needed reforms and unlock international aid.
Earlier on Wednesday, Lebanese protesters briefly attempted to storm the economy ministry to denounce exploding prices of basic goods as the local currency collapses.
Around 20 protesters had gathered outside the ministry’s Beirut headquarters a day after the Lebanese pound hit a new-low of 15,000 to the greenback, according to an AFP correspondent.
Some tried to enter the building, causing tension with security forces, the official National News Agency reported.
“We are killing each other for a bag of diapers and a carton of milk,” one protester told a local TV station.
The political class “has humiliated us,” he said, denouncing hikes in consumer prices which rose by almost 146 percent during 2020, according to official statistics.
Later in the afternoon, demonstrators tried to march toward the presidential palace outside Beirut but they were stopped by security forces.
Others blocked several key roads across the country with burning tires and torched garbage bins.
Lebanon is in the grips of its worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The pound, officially pegged at 1,507 to the greenback since 1997, has lost almost 90 percent of its value on the black market.
Some 55 percent of Lebanese live below the global poverty line of 3.84 dollars a day, the United Nations says.
The country is also facing political deadlock, with no new government agreed some seven months after premier Hassan Diab resigned over an August 4 explosion that killed more than 200 people and disfigured swathes of the capital.
Source: Reuters + AFP
