Lebanon’s President Says Change Must Come From Institutions, Not Protests
Lebanon’s President Says Change Must Come From Institutions, Not Protests
(Bloomberg) -- Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri signaled Thursday that a change in the government lineup may be imminent after eight days of nationwide protests demanding the ouster of a ruling elite blamed for rampant corruption and falling living standards.
“I called his excellency, the president of the republic, and I welcomed his call for a rethink of the current government reality through the constitutional mechanism,” Hariri said in a tweet minutes after President Michel Aoun made a televised address to the nation.
In his first public appearance since the revolt erupted last week, Aoun said a change to the country’s political system should come through institutions, not demonstrations. Though he stopped short of calling on the government to resign, Aoun said it was time to rethink the lineup.
“Change, young people, doesn’t come from the squares,” he said. “Reform is political par excellence. It is now necessary to reconsider the current government reality so that the executive authority can continue to carry out its responsibilities.”
The comments suggest that Hariri may announce a reshuffle in the cabinet, but was unlikely to resign in the face of public pressure.
Hundreds of thousands of people have blocked roads, burned tires and filled streets and squares, calling for the removal of a political class they say has lined its pockets at the expense of the nation. Many have called for a change to the sectarian power-sharing system and demanded early elections. They’ve also called for politicians to return money allegedly embezzled from state coffers over the decades.
The economic stakes are high for Lebanon, which straddles the geopolitical fault-lines of the Middle East and has struggled to emerge from the shadow of a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. The warlords became the rulers and have since presided over a country often paralyzed by political differences. One of the most indebted nations in the world, it needs to find fresh sources of funding as the foreign inflows on which the economy has traditionally relied have dried up.
Banks have been closed since Friday and will not reopen until political solution is reached, the Association of Banks in Lebanon said Thursday. In the meantime, it said banks would replenish ATMs so people could withdraw cash for their daily needs.
Hariri unveiled earlier this week an emergency package of economic measures aimed at averting a financial meltdown and a set of reforms the government hopes will appease the public. Proposing a 2020 budget deficit of nearly zero, the government scrapped plans to impose unpopular new taxes, asked banks to contribute more of their profits to the state and proposed changes that would cut losses at the state electricity company and end blackouts.
Like Aoun’s speech, the proposal failed to satisfy protesters who’ve called on officials to step down with the rallying cry, “All of them means all of them.”
Highlighting the depth of public anger, the revolt for the first time cut across sectarian and political lines, with demonstrators taking aim at both local lawmakers and senior politicians in a way that was, until recently, unimaginable.
Protesters want the current government, which includes 30 ministers from the various sects that share power in Lebanon, to be replaced by a smaller lineup of no more than a dozen technocrats to shepherd the country through political as well as economic reforms.
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Such changes are difficult to enact in Lebanon, a country made up of myriad religious minorities whose interests all need to be balanced and preserved.
The International Monetary Fund projects Lebanon’s current-account deficit will reach almost 30% of gross domestic product by the end of this year. It predicts that growth, stagnant at 0.3% in 2018, will remain weak while public debt is projected to increase to 155% of GDP by the end of 2019.
To contact the reporters on this story: Lin Noueihed in Beirut at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net;Dana Khraiche in Beirut at dkhraiche@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Paul Abelsky
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