BEIRUT, May 21, 2022 (Xinhua) Lebanese President Michel Aoun on Saturday asked the government headed by Najib Mikati to conduct business until a new government is formed, on the eve of the start of the new parliament’s mandate, the Lebanese presidency announced.
The General Directorate of the Lebanese Presidency said in a statement today that “in accordance with the provisions (…) of the constitution related to cases in which the government is considered to have resigned (…) and in view of the start of the new parliament’s mandate tomorrow, the President of the Republic expressed his thanks to the Prime Minister and the ministers.”
She added that President Michel Aoun “asked the government to conduct business until a new government is formed.”
Parliamentary elections were held in Lebanon on May 15, and their final results resulted in a new parliamentary map of partisan and political forces in the absence of any significant majority for any party.
The multi-denominational parliament is composed of 128 deputies, divided equally between Muslims and Christians.
In this context, the parliamentary “Development and Liberation” bloc, which is the Shiite (Amal) movement bloc, announced the candidacy of its speaker, Nabih Berri, to head parliament for a new term, hoping that parliament members would support this nomination.
In a statement issued after a meeting chaired by Berri today, the bloc called on the caretaker government in the transitional period to follow up on economic and social problems, control the evasion of the US dollar exchange rate, deter speculation, and secure fuel, bread, and others.
The election of the speaker, his deputy, and the parliament’s bureau is the first step in the launch of the new parliament, which paves the way for the country’s president to conduct binding parliamentary consultations to nominate a prime minister tasked with forming a government.
Lebanon is suffering from a series of unprecedented interlocking political, economic, living and health crises that the World Bank has ranked among the worst in the world since 1850, exacerbated by the explosion of the huge Port of Beirut in August 2020, and the repercussions of the new Corona virus disease (Covid-19). /ts/