Lebanon gets new government led by Saad Hariri

Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun, center, meets with Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri, right, and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon on Sunday. (Reuters)

BEIRUT: Lebanon acquired a new 30-minister government Sunday led by Saad Hariri, bringing together the entire political spectrum except for the Christian Phalangist party that rejected the portfolio it was offered.
“This is a government of entente,” Hariri said of the new line-up formed six weeks after the election of President Michel Aoun.
New portfolios include an anti-corruption post and, for the first time, a minister of state for women’s affairs.
Hariri said the Phalangist party had been offered a minister of state post but had turned it down.
The new government will have “at the top of its list of priorities to preserve security against the fires ravaging our region,” Hariri told reporters.
He stressed that the government would act to “preserve our country from the negative consequences of the Syrian crisis.”
On November 3, former premier Hariri was nominated to form Lebanon’s next government, but the process was seen as likely to be hampered by deep differences with the powerful Hezbollah movement.
Hariri, 46, is anti-Syria and a fierce opponent of Lebanon’s influential Shiite Hezbollah, members of which have been accused by an international court of involvement in his father’s 2005 assassination.
But he was forced to throw his support behind Aoun, their candidate for the presidency, in order to secure his return to power as premier.
Hariri’s government will have two ministers from Hezbollah.
His nomination and Aoun’s election after a two-year vacuum have raised hopes that Lebanon can begin tackling challenges including a stagnant economy, a moribund political class and the influx of more than a million Syrian refugees.
Hariri also announced the establishment of a state secretariat for refugees, and called on the international community “to take responsibility for helping our country bear the burden.”
Lebanon is due to hold parliamentary elections in May 2017, the first legislative vote in eight years.
The current parliament — elected in 2009 — has extended its own mandate twice amid fierce disagreements over revamping Lebanon’s electoral law.
“The government will also work on the preparation of a new electoral law,” Hariri said on Sunday.
The thorny issue divides religious parties and communities in a country where politics is based on parity between Christians and Muslims.