BEIRUT: Lebanon’s president asked security forces to prevent roadblocks after protesters shut main roads across the country for a seventh straight day on Monday in anger at more than a year of economic crisis and months of political paralysis.
Measures agreed in a meeting with top security and government officials included ordering a crackdown on anyone “violating the monetary and credit” law, including foreign exchange bureaus, a statement said.
Since the Lebanese pound, which has lost 85% of its value, tumbled to a new low last week, protesters have blocked roads daily.
“We have said several times that there will be an escalation because the state isn’t doing anything,” said Pascale Nohra, a protester on a main highway in the Jal al Dib area.
As Lebanon’s financial crisis erupted in late 2019, a wave of mass protest rocked the country, with outrage boiling over at leaders who have overseen decades of state graft.
Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, bank accounts have been frozen and many have been plunged into poverty.
On Monday, three main roads leading south into the capital were blocked while in Beirut itself, protesters briefly closed a road in front of the central bank.
In Tyre in the south, one man tried to burn himself by pouring gasoline on his body but civil defence members stopped him in time, the state news agency said.
In Tripoli in the north, one of Lebanon’s poorest cities, demonstrators built a brick wall one metre high to prevent cars from passing through allowing a pathway for emergency cases.
“The new developments on the financial and security fronts must be tackled quickly,” the presidency statement said.
After a port explosion devastated whole tracts of Beirut in August and killed 200 people, Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government resigned.
But the new prime minister-designate, Saad al Hariri, is at loggerheads with President Michel Aoun and has been unable to form a new government that must carry out the reforms needed to unlock international aid.
On Saturday, Diab threatened to quit even caretaker work to raise the pressure on those blocking the formation of a new government. — Reuters
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