Lebanon’s besieged government has fallen, one week after a cataclysmic explosion destroyed Beirut port, with the country’s prime minister, Hassan Diab, claiming the disaster was the result of endemic corruption.
Diab announced the resignation of the government after more than a third of ministers quit their posts, forcing Diab himself to resign. Diab, who has been prime minister for nine months, was due to notify the president, Michel Aoun, who was expected to accept his resignation.
“I said that corruption is rooted in every part of the state,” the prime minister said. “But I found out that corruption is greater than the state.“A political class is using all their dirty tricks to prevent real change. The more we tried to get to them, the bigger the walls became.
“This disaster is the result of chronic corruption,” said Diab, repeating: “The corruption network is bigger than the state.”He added that he was “heeding people’s demand for real change. Today we will take a step back in order to stand with the people.”
However, the move is unlikely to immediately lead to a clean sweep of the government, with current ministers – including those who have resigned – set to assume a caretaker role and form the backbone of a new administration.
Instead a push is under way for more than a third of sitting MPs to quit parliament, which would force new parliamentary elections and could lead to an injection of new members less tainted by corruption and nepotism.
Lebanon’s leadership has been teetering for the past week since an enormous explosion wiped out port of Beirut and damaged nearby areas. The death toll from the blasts has risen to 200, according to Beirut’s governor. Up to another 6,000 people were wounded.
Decades of incompetence and graft underpinned a decision to keep a stockpile of close to 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate at the port and store it with combustible substances.The explosion has cast a spotlight on weak governance in the Mediterranean state, which was already reeling from an economic implosion that threatened the livelihoods of millions of people.
At least five more bodies have been recovered from near the 45-metre crater in the docks where the fireball erupted. Local investigators were due to finish a preliminary inquiry into the cause of the disaster on Tuesday.The fall of the government failed to quell anger on the streets of central Beirut, where demonstrators again clashed with soldiers and parliamentary guards defending the Lebanese legislature.
A caretaker administration made up of many of the same ministers would do little to satisfy those calling for an overhaul of the country’s political system, including the basis on which governments are formed.
