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Of: TT
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Photo: Gonzalo Fuentes
Clean-up work is still ongoing after the massive accident at the port of Beirut.
Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany, Mustafa Adib, has been appointed the new prime minister of the country in crisis.
On Monday, President Michel Aoun officially gave the mandate to Adib. It emerged this weekend that Christian, Sunni and Muslim Shiite parties in the country’s complicated political landscape are behind the nomination.
– Now we have a small chance to save the country, says Adib according to news agencies after the nomination.
He adds that immediate reforms are needed, among other things to appease the International Monetary Fund (IMF), so that the country can continue to receive credit from the outside world.
The previous government, which continues to rule for a transitional period, resigned on August 10 after the major explosion accident in the port of Beirut the previous week.
Even if Adib forms a government, his mission is described as almost impossible. Several previous governments have resigned in the face of huge and stubbornly persistent popular protests, which have also been violent at times, in the streets and squares of the country. Anger against the country’s elite is fueled by demands for constitutional changes and the harsh crackdown on widespread corruption.
The giant blast in Beirut, when nearly 190 people were killed, 6,500 injured and some 300,000 had their homes destroyed or damaged, has become a symbol of misrule. The background is always the collapsed economy and currency, state indebtedness, rampant poverty and the threat of state bankruptcy, not to mention the risks of a new civil war.
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