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Mustafa Adib has served as Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany for eight years. He has a law and political science degree and previously served as chief of staff to former Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
Adib’s appointment has come under time pressure and comes at the same time that French President Emmanuel Macron arrives in Beirut with demands for reforms and new elections in exchange for financial support. According to information from the Reuters news agency, Macron is said to have been involved in pushing the Adib deal after talks about a new prime minister stalled last week.
Avoid change
But critics see Adib as part of the political establishment accused of decades of corruption and misrule in Lebanon, and see the nomination as a new attempt by the Lebanese leadership to prevent real change.
Almost a month after the explosion that devastated much of Beirut, killed 190 people and left a quarter of a million people homeless, Lebanon’s political leadership has done little to help the survivors.
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The investigation that has been launched has not asked a single minister or senior official about how thousands of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate could be stored in the port in the heart of the city. Instead, the ruling politicians have done their best to hold on to power.
Great popular protests
Lebanon’s government divides power among the country’s 18 different religious groups, a system accused of cementing decades of corruption and nepotism. The country’s political leadership consists in part of former warlords who wore suits at the end of the civil war 30 years ago and held their seats in parliament.
In October last year, huge popular protests against corruption led to the resignation of then-Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. The government that followed under Prime Minister Hassan Diab failed to implement the major political and economic reforms promised. The demonstrations continued and after the port explosion on August 4, anger erupted. However, it took almost a week before Diab tendered his resignation.
Power is divided between religious groups
Lebanon has the highest proportion of refugees in the world and a collapse would spell a possible migration crisis for Europe. The Iranian-backed Shiite-Muslim Hezbollah movement, which has been branded a terrorist by Germany and Great Britain, among others, has great influence in the country’s parliament, while Hezbollah’s armed militia participates in the war in Syria. .
At the same time, Lebanon is a secular republic where power is distributed among different religious groups. The president will be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the Shiite Muslim parliament.
“Pray for us to be successful”
The economy is in free fall and the country’s currency has lost 80 percent of its value in the last year. In a speech ahead of Lebanon’s centennial this weekend, President Michel Aoun emphasized the need for reforms to reduce the influence of religion on the country’s politics. He then promised to call for discussions with actors in society on how to do it.
In his speech after being appointed prime minister on Monday, Mustafa Adib promised to form a government in “record time.” He urged the journalists present to “pray for our success.”
Immediately afterwards, he went to the area near the Beirut port to meet the residents affected by the blast. But the meeting was far from welcoming, and his security personnel quickly had to shove Adib into the car again as people around him chanted “revolution.”
