Lebanese President Michel Aoun yesterday said that protests gripping the country showed “people’s pain,” but that accusing all politicians of corruption equally was not fair.
Aoun added that the government must at least start by lifting banking secrecy from current and future ministers, his office said in a tweet.
“What is happening in the streets expresses people’s pain, but generalizing corruption [charges] against everyone carries big injustice,” he said during a Cabinet session
Photo: AP
Lebanese officials are scrambling to finalize an economic plan to avert a financial meltdown and quell days of nationwide demonstrations demanding the ouster of a political class blamed for entrenched corruption and worsening living standards.
The Cabinet met yesterday to agree on a series of measures after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri gave his coalition partners 72 hours to come up with a reform package, a deadline that expired last night.
Government ministers have already withdrawn plans to tax WhatsApp calls, which sparked the revolt, and pledged to impose no new levies on ordinary people in next year’s budget.
Those promises have so far done little to appease protesters who yesterday took to the streets for a fifth day, saying they would settle for nothing less than a wholesale change to a political system based on sectarian power-sharing and the removal of a political elite they say has built its power base and lined its pockets by exploiting poverty and differences.
Protesters blocked roads around the country as protesters streamed back into the streets waving the national flag.
Banks, schools and the stock market were shut, as were many businesses.
The stakes are high for Lebanon, which straddles the region’s geopolitical fault-lines and has often been a proxy battleground for the Middle East’s broader conflicts.
The 15-year civil war ended in 1990 ,but still haunts a country where the warlords became the rulers and have remained in power ever since. It is that class that protesters say has plundered the state, leaving it unable to provide basic services, including electricity, and close to bankruptcy.
Highlighting the depth of public anger, the revolt for the first time cut across sectarian and political lines, with demonstrators taking aim at both local lawmakers and senior politicians in a way that was, until recently, unimaginable.
“We want 24-hour electricity, 24-hour water, free hospitals for the poor, free good schools. We pay taxes and we get nothing and they want to increase them as well?” said Iman, who runs a snack bar in Beirut, declining to give her full name for privacy. “We want a new generation, not the old faces. Get rid of the sectarian system. Let Lebanese just be a Lebanese and not have to beg a sectarian leader for help securing their most basic needs.”
The financial crisis has been years in the making. For months, sporadic protests and strikes have erupted as a shortage of dollars squeezes businesses and threatens a currency peg in place for more than two decades. Some ATMs no longer dispense dollars and a black market for hard currency is growing, pushing up prices amid stagnant growth.
“Even if they come up with a workable plan, we don’t trust anyone anymore. They’re just offering concessions to shut us up,” said Nour Zain, a university student. “We want the government to fall, then to change the sectarian electoral system, followed by new elections. This will take time. The problem is the financial crisis means we don’t have time.”
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