Lebanon’s
former prime minister Saad Hariri warned that amid the ongoing political and
economic crisis, Lebanon might collapse if the country’s
leaders did not take a united stand towards implementing the French plan. Hariri
during a television interview late, on Thursday, said, “I call on political parties to think
well so as not to waste this chance...French President Macron’s
initiative still stands and we can still enact it. If we let it fail, it would
be a crime.”
French
President Emmanuel Macron proposed a reform plan to help the crisis-riddled
country recover from its worst financial crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
France, which led the efforts to gather foreign aid for Lebanon’s recovery,
raised an urgent need for reforms and stable government which stands for transparency, accountability, retribution and
justice.
Unfortunately, the small Mediterranean country’s sectarian leaders of
the two main Shiite parties, Hezbollah and the Amal bloc, had difference over
Cabinet assembly. The two parties refused to appoint an “independent” Shiite candidate as a finance minister, as
proposed by Hariri.
Hariri, the country’s leading Sunni
politician, said: “There are currently two or three projects in
the country. The project undertaken by Hezbollah and the Amal Movement is
linked to abroad. There is a project that wants to get the country out of this
crisis and to free itself from the parties and it is based on the fact that
Lebanon comes first.”
He added:
“How do you watch your back if three-quarters of
the Lebanese people are hungry? There is an economic collapse, and the
conspiracy is against the people. No one is conspiring against Hezbollah.
Everyone in Lebanon and the international community knows that Hezbollah’s
weapons exist, and these weapons have regional repercussions. In order to solve
this issue, you have to solve the regional problem.”
Hariri,
the country’s three times prime minister in the past said that he would return
to the post again if all the parties agreed on securing an International
Monetary Fund deal. In his opinion, negotiating a bailout deal with the IMF would
be the one way for the country to break the vicious cycle of poverty,
corrupting, and crashing economy. Hariri’s government was pushed down a year ago
by rising nationwide protests triggered by corruption and mismanagement of
funds. Hariri was succeeded by Hassan Diab, whose government lived a similar fate and was
forced to resign within three months of the rule due to the country’s dwindling
foreign reserves. In March the country defaulted for the first time. Owing to
its central bank’s failed monetary policies, the Lebanon
pound spiraled down losing over 70% of its value against the US dollar. In its
history of two decades of political and economic crisis, the country had never
hit this low.
In the
interview Hariri emphasized, “What is
happening in terms of carrying arms and what we are seeing in terms of weapons’ displays
in the street means the collapse of the state,” he said.
Hariri warned: “If a government supported by Hezbollah is
formed, absolutely no one abroad will give Lebanon a single penny. We will be
repeating the same problem.”
Observers believed that the French reform plan
could be Hariri’s golden ticket to be the country’s prime minister once again.
As per inner reports, Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun would be holding discussions with lawmakers
next week to chose the new prime minister, in a bid to announce a new
government, preventing the country from slipping towards the state of collapse.
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