Lebanon Mass Protests Enter 20th Day
Demonstrations in Lebanon continued for the twentieth consecutive day on Tuesday where protesters blocked key roads accusing political leaders of stalling on the formation of a new government amid differences over who should be included.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned last Tuesday, meeting a key demand of the protesters. They have been holding demonstrations since Oct. 17 demanding an end to widespread corruption and mismanagement by the political class that has ruled the country for three decades.
On one of Beirut's main avenues, protesters distributed leaflets apologizing for closing roads and saying that the "roads will remain closed until an independent government is formed."
President Michel Aoun has not yet set a date for consultations with heads of parliamentary blocs to name a new prime minister, the procedure that follows the resignation of a Cabinet.
Many schools, universities and businesses were closed on Tuesday.
Aoun discussed the situation with U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis telling him that once a new Cabinet is formed its priority will be "to follow up on fighting corruption by opening investigations in all state institutions."
The state-run National News Agency reported that Financial Prosecutor Ali Ibrahim has filed a case of overspending against the state's Council for Development and Reconstruction and several other private companies. The case centers on the construction of the Brissa Dam project in northern Lebanon. Such cases against corruption have been rare before the protests.
On Monday, Hariri met with Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil, the target of some of the protesters' harshest chants, over the formation of a new Cabinet. Cabinets usually take months to be formed in Lebanon — a small country in which political power is distributed among Christians, Shiites and Sunnis under an agreement that ended the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
The protesters have been demanding that the new Cabinet does not include politicians, but be made of experts who can work on getting Lebanon out of its economic crisis.
The leaderless anti-government movement has united Lebanese from various religious sects, who are calling for the overthrow of the political system that has dominated the country since the civil war. The following decades of corruption and economic mismanagement have culminating in a severe fiscal crisis.
05 November 2019, 09:16
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We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on us; we help decide whether this new way will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.
We choose a better Lebanon! We choose live with dignity and in peace, not because this is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.
-Paraphrased from a JFK speech.
