Lebanon’s new PM begins bid to form long-awaited cabinet
Lebanon's new prime minister-designate Najib Mikati was due to start consultations with leading political parties yesterday with a view to forming a long-awaited government.
The billionaire politician, already twice a prime minister, was designated on Monday, days after Saad Hariri threw in the towel.
The government of Hassan Diab resigned following a deadly port explosion in Beirut last August and efforts to agree on a new lineup have proved fruitless.
The institutional vacuum is holding up a potential financial rescue plan for Lebanon, which defaulted on its debt last year and has since sunk into what the World Bank has described as one of the world's worst crises since the mid-19th century.
The designation of the 65-year-old Mikati, Lebanon's richest man and to many a symbol of its corrupt oligarchy, was met with general scepticism.
A native of Tripoli, Lebanon's second city and one of its poorest, he was accused by a state prosecutor in 2019 of illicit enrichment, a charge he denies.
"How can I trust a thief who stole from me and my children and their future?" asked 57-year-old Beirut resident Mohammed Deeb, after Mikati's designation.
"As long as this (political) class is still in power, nothing will change."
On Monday evening, dozens of protesters gathered outside Mikati's Beirut home, accusing him of corruption and cronyism.
Lebanon's former colonial ruler France and other Western governments stopped short of welcoming Mikati's designation and simply urged him to swiftly deliver a competent lineup.
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