President and political blocs to begin talks today on forming new government

Consultations between Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun and the country’s parliamentary blocs are scheduled to begin today, a week after the government’s resignation.

Facing a largely non-sectarian movement against corruption and endemic inequality, the parties will look into who could lead the next government and the distribution of Cabinet posts among established parties and independents.

Protesters, who have refused to stop demonstrating until their demands are met, closed major roads in Beirut and elsewhere yesterday after they were reopened at the weekend.

They blocked roads in the northern city of Tripoli and south of Beirut in the Khalde area on the main motorway to southern Lebanon, the staterun National News Agency reported.

Many schools, universities and businesses were also closed yesterday.

On one of Beirut’s main avenues, protesters distributed leaflets apologising for closing roads but saying they “will remain closed until an independent government is formed”.

Mr Aoun has asked the departing government led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri to stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new one can be formed.

But Lebanon has entered a phase of acute political uncertainty, even by its own dysfunctional standards.

Mr Aoun yesterday discussed the situation with the UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon, Jan Kubis, telling him that the next government’s priority would be “to follow up on fighting corruption by opening investigations in all state institutions”.

Meanwhile, a financial prosecutor had filed a case of overspending against the state’s Council for Development and Reconstruction and several other private companies over the construction of a dam in northern Lebanon, the NNA reported. Such cases are rare in the country.

Also yesterday, Mr Hariri met Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, the target of some of the protesters’ harshest chants, over the formation of a new Cabinet.

Mr Bassil is Mr Aoun’s sonin-law and leader of the Free Patriotic Movement party.

Mr Aoun, a Maronite Christian, is allied to the powerful, Iran-backed group Hezbollah

Under Lebanon’s sectarian system of government, the president must be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of parliament a Shiite.

On Sunday, Mr Aoun called for protesters to unite to battle corruption and support the new non-sectarian government he is working to form.

Thousands of anti-government protesters and his supporters met in different areas of Beirut on Sunday evening.

The leaderless anti-government movement has united Lebanese from various religious sects, and is calling for the overthrow of the political system that has dominated the country since the end of the 1975 to 1990 civil war.

The agreement ending the war distributed power among Christians, and Shiite and Sunni Muslims, but led to decades of corruption and economic mismanagement culminating in a severe fiscal crisis.

About noon on Sunday, Mr Aoun addressed thousands of his supporters at a rally near the presidential palace in Baabda.

“There are lots of squares and no one should pit one against another, or one demonstration against another,” he said.

Mr Aoun said that “corruption will not end easily because it has been deeply rooted for decades”.

Mr Aoun called for protesters to support the new non-sectarian government he is working to form