BEIRUT: Lebanon’s president offered on Thursday to meet the protesters whose week-old mobilisation to demand a complete overhaul of the political system has brought the country to a standstill.
But Michel Aoun’s first speech since the start of the unprecedented protest movement was met with disdain by demonstrators who see him and the entire political class as part of the problem, not the solution.
Sparked on October 17 by a proposed tax on free calls made through messaging apps such as Whatsapp, the protests have morphed into a cross-sectarian street mobilisation against a political system seen as corrupt and broken.
In his speech, Aoun told protestors he was “ready to meet your representatives... to hear your demands”.
He suggested that a government reshuffle might be needed, an option that other leaders have hinted they would consider — but which would fall far short of demonstrators’ demand that the entire government quit.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday presented a package of reforms, including cutting ministerial salaries, but the rallies have continued, crippling Beirut and other major cities.
“The reform paper that was approved will be the first step to save Lebanon and remove the spectre of financial and economic collapse,” Aoun said.
“It was your first achievement because you helped remove obstacles in front of it and it was adopted in record speed,” he told the protesters.
But dozens of demonstrators listening to the speech on loudspeakers outside parliament booed it, a reporter said.
Protestor Jad al Hajj, a mechanical engineering student, described Aoun’s speech as “meaningless” and vowed to stay in the street.
“We want him to go and for this era to end — for all of them to go,” he said.
More than a quarter of Lebanon’s population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.
Almost three decades since the end of Lebanon’s civil war, political deadlock has stymied efforts to tackle mounting economic woes compounded by the eight-year civil war in neighbouring Syria.
In previous days, tens of thousands have gathered all over Lebanon, with largely peaceful rallies morphing into raucous celebrations at night.
But in central Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square on Thursday, numbers were far lower, the correspondent said.
Outside parliament in the afternoon, security forces intervened to quell tensions between protesters over chants against the leader of Hezbollah, local and state media said. One person was injured.
As rain poured down on the capital, others sought shelter in an iconic abandoned cinema on the edge of the square nicknamed “the Egg”.
— AFP
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