In Lebanon, a familiar name takes helm amid new crises
BEIRUT — Najib Mikati, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon, became the prime minister of Lebanon on Friday, seizing the reins for a third time in a country that has been without a government for more than a year while its people careened deeper into an economic abyss.
The formation of Mikati’s Cabinet was announced from the presidential palace after Mikati and President Michel Aoun signed a decree to make it official in the presence of the speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri.
Dispensing with the tradition of reading prepared remarks, Mikati delivered an emotional speech, summarizing the suffering of the Lebanese and calling for unity to pull the country out of the crisis.
Appearing to choke up, he mentioned mothers who could not find basic painkillers or baby formula, fathers who could not explain to their children why so many of their peers had fled the country, and workers who had lost their savings in insolvent banks.
“The situation is very hard, and all of us know it,” Mikati said. “But it is not impossible if we all stand together as Lebanese.”
Lebanon, a small, turbulent Mediterranean country, is suffering through an economic collapse that the World Bank has said could rank among the three worst in the world since the mid-1800s.
Since fall 2019, the national currency has lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar, unemployment has spread, businesses have closed, and prices have skyrocketed.
Grave fuel shortages in recent months have left all but the wealthiest Lebanese struggling with extensive electricity cuts and
long lines at gas stations. The country’s once celebrated banking, medical and education sectors have all taken huge hits, as professionals have fled to jobs abroad.
Lebanon has been without a fully empowered government since August 2020, when Prime Minister Hassan Diab and his Cabinet resigned after a huge explosion in the Beirut port that caused extensive damage to the Lebanese capital and killed more than 200 people.
The explosion was caused by the sudden combustion of whatever was left of 2,750 tons of hazardous chemicals that had been unloaded into the port years before.
Many Lebanese saw the blast, and the efforts by powerful politicians to hobble the investigation into its causes, as the starkest examples yet of the country’s deep dysfunction.
Mikati has served as prime minister twice before, most recently from June 2011 to May 2013, a background critics said made him part of the political
elite that had driven the country into the ground and an unlikely figure to press for wide-reaching reforms.
It was not clear what immediate steps Mikati would take to stem a crisis whose causes have been accumulating for many years, but he said he would solicit aid from other Arab countries.
One looming issue is the government’s inability to subsidize imports of food, medicine and fuel, which has caused shortages and rampant inflation.
Mikati told reporters that the subsidies would have to go, not because he wanted to get rid of them, but because the government was broke.
“Where are we going to get dollars to subsidize? We are dry,” he said.
Mikati, 65, has been a well-known figure in Lebanese business and politics for decades. A company he co-founded with his brother has international investments in telecommunications, real estate and other sectors, contributing to his net worth of $2.8 billion, according to Forbes.