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Sudden exchange rate turmoil angers Lebanese ahead of parliamentary elections

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By Najia Houssari -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: A sudden upheaval in Lebanon's exchange rate has angered people ahead of parliamentary elections. Economist Louis Hobeika said the turmoil should motivate people to “vote for change and not re-elect those in power.” He told Arab News that the ruling parties had all the time they needed to issue laws but did nothing. The Lebanese pound hit a sudden low, trading at LBP28,000 to the dollar on Friday, with the country on official holidays until Tuesday for Orthodox Easter. The exchange rate turmoil caused a clamor in the markets, as people said on social media that shop owners had already started pricing goods based on a rate of LBP30,000 to the dollar.

Protesters cut off the southern highway with burning tires, denouncing the deteriorating living conditions, Lebanon’s National News agency reported. Electricite du Liban, the state-owned electricity supplier, said on Thursday that the Deir Ammar power plant had shut down. The Zahrani power plant shut down last week, leaving the Lebanese with no electricity supply until a ship carrying a fuel delivery is unloaded and tested. Subscription fees for private generators that are charged in dollars continue to rise. The two plants depend exclusively on Iraqi fuel as part of an agreement concluded between the two countries last August. The state is unable to secure dollars to import additional quantities of fuel, while the agreement to draw electricity from Jordan and gas from Egypt is yet to be implemented. According to the agreement with Iraq, every month only one shipment of 40,000 tons of gas oil is supplied to Lebanon, for the benefit of EDL.

Minister Sejaan Azzi: انتَخِبوا لفرحِ الأطفال

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سجعان قزي

@AzziSejean

تُقبِلُ الانتخاباتُ النيابيّةُ في لبنان مُطوَّقةً خارجيًّا بمؤتمرِ فيينا وانتفاضةِ المسجِدِ الأقصى وحربِ أوكرانيا والتطبيعِ العربيّ وزيارةِ البابا فرنسيس، وتأتي داخليًّا مُهدَّدةً بقانونِ انتخابٍ هَجينٍ ومرشَّحين كُثرٍ هواةٍ والتفافٍ على تصويتِ المغتربين وانهيارٍ زاحفٍ وفَقرٍ منتَشرٍ وانتخاباتٍ رئاسيّةٍ مُثقلَةٍ بالمخاطرِ وصراعٍ وطنيٍّ حولَ وجودِ لبنان. واقعُ الانتخاباتِ يُحرّضُ على التصويتِ بورقةٍ بيضاء، لكنَّ مصيرَ لبنان يُشجِّعُ على المشاركةِ الكثيفةِ حِفاظًا على لبنانَ وطنًا ودولةً وهُويّة. الصوتُ هذه المرّةَ بندقيّة. لا نختارُ بين لوائحَ بل بين لُبنانات.

في هذا السياق، إلى أيِّ مدى يَحضُرُ الحِسُّ الوطنيُّ في لحظةِ الخِيارِ الانتخابيّ؟ كان الفيلسوفُ النمساويُّ لودفيغ فتغنشتاين Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) يُردِّد: "لستُ رجلًا مُتديّنًا، لكنْ لا مَناصَ مِن النظرِ إلى كلِّ قضيّةٍ تواجِهُني من زاويةٍ دينيّة". الترجمةُ اللبنانيّةُ لهذا القول هي: إلى أي مدى يَصعُبُ على المواطن، مهما كان انتماؤه، أن يَتجاوزَ الحِسَّ الوطنيَّ لحظةَ الخِيار الانتخابيِّ؟ وما مدى غَلَبةِ مصلحةِ الوطنِ على مصالحِ المواطنِ في هذا الزمنِ الرديء؟ أثناءَ صلاةِ الجمعةِ العظيمةِ اسْتقرّت في ذاكرتي عبارةُ: " شَبِعَتْ من البَلايا نفْسي، ودَنَتْ من الجحيمِ حياتي". بتعبيرٍ لبناني، معاناةُ المواطنِ في هذه المرحلةِ تَـمَزُّقُهُ بين أوْلويَّتين: وَجعُه ووجعُ الوطن.

Lebanon’s parliament session halted as dispute over capital control bill widens

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By Najia Houssari - arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: The Lebanese parliament’s session was adjourned on Wednesday after protesting depositors threw stones at deputies and insulted them for continuing to discuss the capital control bill. The government amended the draft bill and sent it to parliament for a second time, but no agreement was reached and the session was cut short. Formal capital controls are an International Monetary Fund policy recommendation, and Lebanon hopes to secure an IMF aid package after its financial system imploded in 2019, paralyzing the banking system and freezing depositors out of their US dollar accounts. Some politicians from the Lebanese Forces Party and the Free Patriotic Movement refused to discuss the draft law before reviewing the “economic recovery plan,” which they say “is trying to swallow up the rights of depositors.”

George Adwan, the head of the Parliamentary Administration and Justice Committee, said: “The plan will write off $60 billion of debt, and the depositors will bear the losses.” He called for “a plan that defines responsibilities first, and then searches for capital control,” adding that any research “outside the path of determining responsibilities and distributing losses means taking the country into the unknown.” Ibrahim Kanaan, head of the Parliamentary Budget Finance Committee, said: “How can we freeze the deposits while we do not know what is left of them? People have rights that must be preserved. The depositor should not be held responsible for the state’s wear and tear, but rather the Bank of Lebanon, private banks and the state.” Meanwhile, Elie Ferzli, the deputy parliament speaker, defied depositors who were protesting in the street by ramming them with his car as he drove into the parliament courtyard. They responded by throwing stones and shouting at him. Footage of the incident went viral on social media. As he was leaving the meeting hall, Ferzli mocked the protesters, telling a journalist he was “ready to do it again.”

Lea Salameh: the Lebanese-born journalist behind France’s TV election debate

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by Soraya Ebrahimi -- thenationalnews.com -- Lea Salame is a Lebanese-born French journalist who was born on October 27, 1979. She escaped war in Lebanon with her Lebanese father and Armenian mother and settled in Paris at the age of 5. She obtained French nationality six years later. Her father, Ghassan Salame, is a former Lebanese minister of culture and former special adviser to UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

She undertook her first internship on the Parliamentary Channel. She joined France 24 in 2007 to present La Soiree and having spent a year studying in New York, she also worked on the channel’s A Week in the Americas. Salame undertook a trial run on France 3 to present Le Soir 3 then went to work on I Teli to present Elysee 2012. In September 2014, she replaced Natacha Polony in On n'est pas Couche, broadcast on Saturday evenings on France 2. Since August 2014, Salame has hosted the main interview on France Inter’s morning show. She also conducts high-profile interviews in the French edition of GQ. In her private life, Salame has one child with Raphael Glucksmann, a politician in the European Parliament.

Bicycling movement sweeps Lebanon

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By Clement Gibon -- almonitor.com -- BEIRUT — Faced with fuel shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, dozens of Lebanese drivers stuck in front of gas stations on Mar Mikhael Street wait impatiently to fill up their vehicles — a situation echoing last summer's “queues of humiliation.” As a consequence of the fuel shortage, many Lebanese have turned to bicycling — a less expensive and more environmentally friendly way of getting around. Ramzi Alieh, a young Lebanese architect, uses his bicycle to traverse Beirut. “I started cycling right away in Beirut … when the fuel crisis hit Lebanon. Thanks to this mode of transportation, I was much less affected by the shortage,” Alieh told Al-Monitor. “Now, with the war in Ukraine, mobility is becoming an issue again. Since I am already used to riding my bike, I don't have to worry about queues, rising fuel prices or expensive repairs,” he said.

In the space of a few months, the price of oil has increased drastically in Lebanon. While the price of diesel was 30,000 Lebanese pounds last June, it increased by 1,667% to 500,000 Lebanese pounds in April, which is almost the entire monthly salary of a Lebanese worker. For many, this increase in fuel costs added another burden to an already difficult daily life, said economist Patrick Mardini, head of the Lebanese Institute for Market Studies. “The war in Ukraine has led to an increase in the price of fuel worldwide. As a result, the price of transportation and fuel will become even more expensive in Lebanon,” Mardini told Al-Monit

The Ponzi Scheme That Broke Lebanon

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By Sam Heller -- foreignpolicy.com -- For the last two and a half years, Lebanon’s economy has been in free fall. The country’s currency, the lira, has lost more than 90 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar; GDP has shrunk by nearly 60 percent; and close to 80 percent of Lebanese have slipped below the poverty line, along with practically all of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the country.

The crisis, which is among the worst to hit any country in modern history, was precipitated by the collapse of what UN Secretary General António Guterres described as “something similar to a Ponzi scheme”: for years, the country’s central bank used ordinary bank depositors’ money to finance the corrupt and wasteful spending of successive Lebanese governments. Participants in the scheme reaped huge returns—until 2019, when it all came tumbling down. The pyramid scheme may not have been technically illegal, but it nonetheless amounted to corruption on a grand scale: Lebanese elites made a killing, spirited their ill-gotten gains abroad, and left millions of their impoverished countrymen holding the bag.

But the crisis wasn’t just caused by greed and corruption; it has been prolonged by the unwillingness of those who are responsible to change their ways or to assume their fair share of the country’s massive financial losses. International donors are willing to discuss a bailout that could right the economy, but Lebanese leaders have resisted even the most basic reforms that lenders have demanded as a precondition for a rescue package. The country’s political and financial elites have benefited handsomely from the current system, and they stand to lose from any ordered resolution of Lebanon’s national bankruptcy. According to the World Bank, Lebanon is now mired in a “deliberate depression,” one that has been “orchestrated by the country’s elite that has long captured the state and lived off its economic rents.”

As the Iran nuclear deal nears, Saudi Arabia is rebuilding its stake in Lebanon

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Abu Dhabi, UAE (CNN) -- By Nadeen Ebrahim -- Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati is due to visit Saudi Arabia in the next two weeks, a first trip by a Lebanese premier to the Arab powerhouse in almost four years following an unprecedented rupture in relations. The last visit was in 2018 by then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who in 2021 stepped down nearly nine months after he was tasked with forming the country's government. One of Lebanon's biggest benefactors, Saudi Arabia's ties with Beirut had been progressively deteriorating over the past decade, a split fueled by Iran-backed Hezbollah's growing influence in the country. This came to head in 2017 when Hariri, once Saudi Arabia's main ally in Lebanon , resigned in a televised statement from Riyadh. Lebanese politicians said he was forced to take the decision after being detained in the kingdom. Hariri and Saudi Arabia denied those claims.

The tensions culminated in a break in relations in October following Lebanese information minister George Kordahi's open criticism of the Saudi-led coalition's war in Yemen. The comments were made before Kordahi took office, but Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states withdrew their envoys from Beirut after recordings of the criticism resurfaced. The minister subsequently resigned. Lebanon has for more than two years been suffering from a financial crisis the World Bank says is one of the world's worst since the nineteenth century. The Levantine country's woes have been further exacerbated by political wrangling, corruption and disputes over a delicate power-sharing system. Ties with Riyadh seem to be on the mend, however. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies Kuwait and Yemen have said they'll re-instate their ambassadors in Beirut. The Saudi ambassador to Lebanon also hosted a Ramadan iftar banquet, which was attended by Lebanese leaders and former officials.

Do Saudi and Arab overtures to Lebanon point to a change of heart? And why now?