A meeting at the Grand Serail on July 6 between outgoing Premier Hassan Diab and ambassadors from several countries. (Credit: Dalati & Nohra)
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The French and US ambassadors to Lebanon are traveling to Saudi Arabia today to discuss ways to push for the government’s formation. Anne Grillo and Dorothy Shea’s visit to the kingdom follows a meeting of the three countries’ foreign ministers on the sidelines of the G-20 summit at the end of June. A US Embassy statement said the trip’s main purpose is to “develop our trilateral diplomatic strategy focused on government formation,” while the French Embassy said it would push for international pressure on those perceived to be impeding the cabinet’s formation. France already said it has begun sanctioning certain Lebanese figures for their role in Lebanon’s political crisis or corruption. This week has seen an increase in diplomatic maneuvering to try to break a monthslong deadlock between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri over the government’s makeup, with Qatar’s foreign minister visiting Lebanon on Tuesday to try to “resolve the crisis Lebanon is experiencing at all levels.”
Meanwhile, another French envoy is in Lebanon to discuss humanitarian aid. Pierre Duquesne, the diplomat tasked with coordinating international support to Lebanon, arrived in Beirut yesterday and is expected to stay until Tuesday. He will meet with several “political and financial actors” to discuss the prospect of a new international conference to garner support for Lebanon, a French Embassy spokesperson told L’Orient Today. France has already chaired two general emergency aid conferences for Lebanon since the Beirut port explosion on Aug. 4 last year. However, other large sums of money pledged to Lebanon are locked away from use, as donors have made their ability contingent on broad-scale structural reforms.
COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly in Lebanon, with health officials warning the highly transmissible Delta variant is circulating widely. Wednesday’s coronavirus report showed another large leap in case numbers — 401, up from 294 the day before. The number of people being treated for COVID-19 in intensive care rose slightly, marking a worrying uptick after the downward trend of recent weeks. In an effort to prevent new cases from arriving from overseas, the COVID-19 committee recommended a three-night hotel quarantine for passengers arriving from Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, the United Arab Emirates and Zambia. Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan will give a press conference at the Beirut airport this morning before inspecting coronavirus control measures for arrivals.
Young children are in “imminent danger” due to a lack of infant vaccines, the head of the Order of Physicians has warned. Charaf Abou Charaf said pediatricians are complaining that they cannot find the shots needed to immunize children, including those for tuberculosis, and called on the World Health Organization to help secure them. As medication shortages persist, a group of protesters stormed a medicine warehouse in Tripoli and found scores of products that are out of stock in pharmacies. The protesters asked the Health Ministry to distribute the drugs in the market. Meanwhile, pharmacists in northern Lebanon are going on strike today because of what they describe as “repeated attacks on the pharmaceutical corps.”
Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee approved a draft law that would remove banking secrecy from public sector workers’ accounts. The committee’s head, Ibrahim Kanaan, said following a session yesterday that the draft law approved by the MPs heeded a request from Aoun that the judiciary play a role in implementing the law. Lawmakers had previously suggested that due to the judiciary’s politicization, the National Anti-Corruption Commission alone should be responsible for overseeing the law. Even if passed by full Parliament, it remains doubtful that the law will be implemented, as a law to establish an independent judiciary is still under discussion in Parliament, and while the anti-corruption body was created in 2020, only two of its members have been appointed.
The lira’s value sank to yet another new low yesterday, with parallel market exchangers selling US dollars at an exchange rate of more than LL18,000. Since summer 2019, when the lira first began to untether from its official, LL1,507.5 peg to the dollar and signs of an impending economic crisis became visible, the currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value, driving rapid inflation and sending the cost of living soaring. Recent efforts by the central bank to curb the currency’s crash, including the establishment of Sayrafa, its official exchange platform, and the reduction of the number of new lira banknotes in circulation, appear to have had little if any effect.