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On Sunday, a Lebanese politician said that French President Emmanuel Macron telephoned the Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, Nabih Berri, in an attempt to overcome an obstacle to meet a deadline this week to form a government that would lift the country out of its crisis.
Berri leads the Amal Movement, a Shiite party allied with Hezbollah, which wields broad influence in Lebanon.
When Macron visited Beirut on September 1, the Lebanese leadership vowed to form a government of specialists without partisan loyalties within two weeks. There are only days left in this period.
A prominent political source said meeting the deadline requires what he described as a miracle. Usually it takes months to form a new government in Lebanon.
Qassem Hashem, a prominent politician from Berri’s parliamentary bloc, said Macron spoke with Berri on Saturday. Macron is leading international efforts to help Lebanon resolve its economic crises that have worsened after the Beirut port bombing last month.
Hashem said Berri insisted that the Finance Ministry remain in the hands of a Shiite figure under the sectarian quota system that is applied in the country.
The task of forming the government is assumed by Prime Minister-designate Mustafa Adeeb, a Sunni who resigned as Beirut’s ambassador to Berlin to take office. Adeeb did not make many statements, but sources said he wanted a comprehensive change in the leadership of ministries that have been assigned to a single sect for years.
France had envisioned steps to be taken to eliminate rampant corruption in the country and tackle a host of economic problems, so that Lebanon could obtain much-needed international aid while facing the worst crisis since the civil war that broke out between 1975 and 1990.
Donor countries pledged billions of dollars in 2018, but those sums were not awarded because Lebanon failed to implement reforms.
Whoever holds the post of Finance Minister will be at the center of launching the reform program needed to overcome a banking crisis that caused the currency to collapse and pushed many Lebanese into poverty.
