We will form a non-partisan government of specialists as soon as possible

Wasim Saifuddin / Anatolia

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said on Thursday that he will form a government of non-partisan specialists as soon as possible.

Earlier Thursday, Lebanese President Michel Aoun appointed Hariri to form the new government after obtaining 65 votes out of 118, while 53 MPs did not name any other figure and two were absent from the consultations.

The Lebanese presidency said in a statement that Aoun carried out the binding parliamentary consultations and, after consulting with the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, and briefing him on the results, summoned Hariri to appoint him to form the government. .

“I will form a government of non-partisan specialists, and I will work to form a government quickly because time is running out and this is the last chance,” Hariri said at a conference after his assignment to form the government.

He added: “The new government will have the task of implementing the economic, financial and administrative reforms contained in the French initiative document, in which the main blocks of Parliament pledged to support the government for their implementation.

Hariri returns to the head of the Lebanese government, following the apology of the former prime minister-designate, Mustafa Adib, on September 26, for the failure of his mission to form a government following the bombing of the port of Beirut on August 4.

This is the fourth time that Hariri has led the Lebanese government, having assumed the first in 2009, then the second in 2016, before his third government, which was formed in 2018, collapsed due to popular protests.

Hariri’s third government submitted its resignation on October 29, 2019, under pressure from popular protests demanding economic and political reforms, to be succeeded by Hassan Diab, whose government resigned 10 days after the Beirut port explosion.

Lebanon has been suffering, for months, an economic crisis that is the worst since the end of the civil war (1975: 1990), in addition to severe political polarization, in a scenario in which the interests of regional and western countries collide .

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