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Lebanese parties jostle for votes; Arab League to monitor elections

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By Najia Houssari -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit has announced that his organization is ready to send a team to Lebanon to monitor the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 15. “The Arab League has done this in Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, and many regions, and I think we will implement this in Lebanon,” he said. Aboul Gheit visited Lebanon on Monday as part of the arrangements for holding the Arab summit in Algeria on Nov. 1 and 2. Lebanese President Michel Aoun met with Aboul Gheit and assured him that the elections will take place on time. According to Aoun’s media office, he welcomed the idea of an Arab League team monitoring the elections. With the candidacy deadline ending Tuesday midnight, the electoral competition has intensified between the large blocs who have started to announce their candidates. The number of newly registered candidates jumped to nearly 600 by Monday noon.

Sectarian polarization has started to trickle into electoral campaigns. Some parties, especially Hezbollah and its allies, have attacked foreign parties and their role in these pivotal elections. Parties will be desperate for votes as the new parliament will elect the next Lebanese president in October. As the political jostling heated up, former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora expressed a glum view about the future of the country.

White House faces oil standoff with Saudi Arabia and UAE as prices soar

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by theguardian.com -- Martin Chulov and Julian Borger -- Joe Biden’s hardline stance on Russia has won him widespread plaudits, but with the most serious oil shock in decades now a reality, the US president’s attempt to cushion the blowback continues to meet resistance from the two allies he needs most. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, and his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, are yet to agree to a phone call with the west’s most powerful man – a scenario all but unthinkable during previous administrations. Biden’s immediate priority is for both countries to help exert maximum economic pressure on Russia by cranking up their oil output. Each capital is a major supplier of oil, with excess capacity, which would soften the effect on US consumers through fuel prices before midterm elections in November that threaten Democratic control of Congress.

With relations between the Middle East oil powers and Washington at their lowest in modern times, though, a reckoning is due that may realign the regional order on terms that favour Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Both leaders have made it clear that they will settle for nothing less, and are ready to extract their price. As if to show the Biden administration what it could do, the UAE ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, last Wednesday said it favoured production increases “and will be encouraging Opec to consider higher production levels”, leading oil prices to fall by 13% the next day. But no action to increase supply followed and by the week’s end the price per barrel was back up to almost $130 (£100), an uncomfortably high level for Biden to take to the midterms. However, the standoff involves far more than oil. In Riyadh, Prince Mohammed feels snubbed by Biden’s refusal to engage with him ever since he took office. The murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by the crown prince’s security aides, the war on Yemen, the jailing of rights activists and the boycott of Qatar have made him a pariah to the administration.

Lebanon political factions gear up for May elections

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by arabnews.com -- Najia Houssari -- BEIRUT: More than 500 candidates, including 69 women, have applied to contest Lebanese parliamentary elections on May 15, with the country’s Ministry of Interior expecting the number to rise dramatically before the midnight deadline on Tuesday. A total of 517 candidates had submitted applications by late Friday. The 2018 elections were contested by 976 candidates, including 113 women, but the number fell after the closure of registrations. As a result, 597 candidates, including 86 women, continued in 77 lists across Lebanese constituencies. The outlook of this year’s election will become clearer after the completion of electoral lists on April 4. Voters will head to the polls on May 15, with candidates competing for the country’s 128 parliamentary seats across 15 electoral districts. A number of the main parties will officially announce their candidates on Monday.

Speaker Nabih Berri will reveal his candidates, including current MPs and defendants in the Beirut Port explosion hearings, at a press conference. The Free Patriotic Movement announced its candidates during its seventh annual conference on Sunday. In an address, the party’s leader, Gebran Bassil, attacked his political opponents, including the March 14 Alliance and the civil movement, which he called “a false revolution,” adding that “they will fall.” Bassil defended Hezbollah and said that its partnership with the FPM in the electoral lists, to be formed later, “is not a program partnership, but a process of integrating votes.” Hezbollah seeks to ensure that the FPM reaches parliamentary seats with the least possible losses. Hezbollah officials have said: “Whoever fails the Amal Movement and Hezbollah is a partner in the largest regional and international attack that wants to destroy Hezbollah, which protects Lebanon.”

Cash or card? Confusion rages over Lebanon’s new payment system

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by arabnews.com -- Najia Houssari -- BEIRUT: Supermarket owners in Lebanon have blamed “hard-line measures” from the Banque du Liban for the introduction of a new payment system for their customers. The central bank’s change requires the payment of 50 percent of the value of purchases in cash, and 50 percent through bank cards, on account of “low liquidity” in markets, according to Nabil Fahed, head of the Syndicate of Supermarket Owners. This development came the same day as gas station owners decided to stop accepting full payments for fuel via bank card. Dr. Jassem Ajaka, an economist, described the repercussions as “economically catastrophic, as long as the amount of banknotes in Lebanese pounds that a citizen can withdraw from banks is limited while prices are rising.” This situation, he claimed, would make people consume less, causing a decline in GDP and a larger contraction in the economy.

Charles Arbid, president of the Economic and Social Council, said that Lebanon “is experiencing inflationary depression: That is, consumption and economic movement are stalled.” Operational prices are also rising for sectors such as energy and transportation, developments which, he said, require the immediate launch of a three-dimensional participatory dialogue at government level with employers and workers to devise solutions and take action. He added: “No solutions are magical and readily available.” The Association of Banks in Lebanon, meanwhile, will pay the government-approved social assistance to public sector employees, including the military. This assistance is equivalent to half of an additional salary per month, with a minimum of 1.5 million Lebanese pounds ($993) and a maximum of 3 million pounds. Sixty percent of this is paid in cash, and other means of payment are being adopted to transfer the remaining 40 percent by bank card or check.

Lebanon is running out of time to avert starvation

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By MICHAEL TANCHUM -- thenationalnews.com -- As Russia's two-week-old war against Ukraine has brought Lebanon's wheat imports from the besieged Black Sea nation to a complete standstill, the government in Beirut is racing against the clock to avert a catastrophic food crisis. The conflict has set off a food security problem for many nations across the Middle East and North Africa – a region that relies on the Black Sea wheat-growing region as their bread basket – but Lebanon's situation is uniquely precarious. Its severe lack of storage capacity combined with its economic state of hyperinflation is to blame. The situation is dire, and in the absence of immediate financial assistance, a food system collapse could happen in a matter of weeks or even days.

Lebanon needs to import about 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat each month to cover the nation's demand for bread, and the government had relied on Ukraine to provide about two thirds of that wheat supply, amounting to more than 400,000 metric tonnes per year. Lebanon used to be able to store four months' worth of wheat reserves, but the August 2020 Beirut Port explosion destroyed the country's primary grain storage silos, removing 120,000 tonnes of storage capacity that has yet to be restored to this day. Lebanon's other major port in Tripoli has no grain storage capacity, leaving the country to fend with only a one month's storage by using warehouses owned by 12 mills.

Lebanese prosecutor bans five bank board chiefs from travel

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by reuters -- BEIRUT: A Lebanese prosecutor on Thursday issued travel bans against the heads of the boards of five Lebanese banks as a precautionary measure as she investigates transactions by their banks, the prosecutor told Reuters. Judge Ghada Aoun issued the bans against Salim Sfeir of Bank of Beirut, Samir Hanna of Bank Audi, Antoun Sehnaoui of SGBL, Saad Azhari of Blom Bank, and Raya Hassan of Bankmed. She has not charged any of them with a crime. When contacted, Hassan told Reuters she was “speechless” and noted she had joined the bank after the transactions took place. Azhari did not immediately respond to a request for comment, neither did officials from Bank Audi, SGBL and Bank of Beirut.

لقاء الجمهورية: طرح الميغاسنتر في هذا التوقيت ملتبس ونخشى ان ينسف مواعيد الاستحقاقات الدستورية

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وطنية - عقد "لقاء الجمهورية" اجتماعه عبر تطبيق" زوم" برئاسة الرئيس ميشال سليمان واكد في بيان "ضرورة إجراء الانتخابات في مواعيدها، لانه عدا عن كونها حقا طبيعيا للمواطن وأحد الأعمدة الأساسية للنظام الديموقراطي، فإنها تشكل سدا بوجه تسلط الحكام والامعان في المحاصصة، لذا فلا يجوز وتحت أي غطاء أو عذر تأجيل مواعيد استحقاقها"، مشيرا الى ان" طرح تنفيذ الميغاسنتر على أهميته وضرورته في هذا التوقيت طرح ملتبس"، معربا عن خشيته من "ان ينسف مواعيد الاستحقاقات الدستورية".

ورأى "في الحرب على اوكرانيا خروجا عن المألوف والمنتظر من الدول الكبرى"، واعتبر ان "حرية الدول تجسيد لحرية الفرد ويرفض اللجوء إلى القوة لتغيير نظام ما، أو فرض شروط معينة، وتشكل انتهاكا لحقوق الانسان ومواثيق الأمم المتحدة الملزمة للبنان وفق الفقرة "ب" من مقدمة الدستور وهذا الموقف لا يخرج اطلاقا عن سياسة الحياد"، مؤكدا ان "الحوار هو الطريق الامثل لحل