Soon five months he was appointed. Five months of little phrases and big speeches, negotiations and meetings, tours abroad and consultations with ambassadors. And on arrival, nothing. The government that Saad Hariri was tasked with forming on October 22, 2020, with the aim of pulling Lebanon out of the worst economic crisis in its history, is still long overdue.
The leader of the Sunni camp, supposed to succeed Hassan Diab, who resigned since the catastrophic explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, never ceases to fall apart with President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, leader of the main Christian party, the Free Patriotic Current. The quarrel concerns the blocking third party claimed in the future executive by the presidential camp and the portfolios of the interior and justice, which none of them wants to give up.
Laughable reasons given the gravity of the situation. The Shiite Hezbollah movement, the most powerful of the three poles of power in the Lebanese system, which has secured its quota of ministers, remains aloof from these bickering, as if it was in no rush to resolve them.
Each of these actors is reluctant to make the necessary gestures to relaunch government action, even if their inaction leads to the collapse of the country.
Because the fall of the national currency, which dropped from the official rate of 1,500 pounds to the dollar in the fall of 2019, has suddenly accelerated in recent weeks. The greenback that traded in October 2020, at the time of Saad Hariri’s appointment, at 8,000 pounds on the black market, rose to 10,000 pounds in early March, before soaring to 15,000 pounds at the start of week.
Extension of poverty and threat of blackout
Difficult to clarify the reasons for this sudden hemorrhage. Beyond the government paralysis, which blocks the reforms essential to the return of confidence (central bank audit, capital control law, etc.), observers point to several possibly aggravating factors: the recent obligation imposed on institutions banks to increase their dollar deposits with the Lebanese monetary institution; the recent reopening of stores after two months of confinement, which also boosted demand for greenbacks.
They also evoke possible manipulation of the courts, at the instigation of the Hariri camp, to put pressure on his opponents. “In this family, it’s almost a tradition”, mocks Mohanad Hage Ali, analyst at the Carnegie Research Center. A reference to the 1992 depreciation, deemed fabricated by many experts, which facilitated the coming to power of Rafik Hariri, Saad’s father.
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