04 January 2019•Update: 04 January 2019
By Wassim Seifeddine
BEIRUT
Lebanese civil servants staged a general strike Friday to protest Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s failure to draw up a new cabinet and resolve the country’s ongoing economic crisis.
Responding to calls by Lebanon’s General Labor Union, public-sector employees from numerous sectors refrained from going to work on Friday.
"Strikers demand that government officials swiftly form a competent and corruption-free government," Labor Union head Bechara al-Asmar said at a press conference held in Beirut.
Most private-sector institutions, meanwhile, including most markets and shops, were unaffected by calls to strike.
Following May parliamentary polls, President Michel Aoun tasked Hariri with drawing up a new cabinet lineup.
The process, however, has faced repeated delays amid mutual recriminations between rival political factions and demands by certain parties for greater representation in the incoming government.
According to Lebanon’s constitution, the prime minister-designate does not have a deadline for unveiling a new cabinet.
In a statement released Friday evening, Aoun attributed the continued delay to “deep-seated differences” between the country’s leading political forces.
He went on to urge the latter to “shoulder their national responsibilities and expedite the process of forming a government”.
Under the 1989 Taif Accord, which ended Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, government posts are shared between the country’s main ethno-religious groupings, with six cabinet portfolios reserved for Sunni Muslims, six for Shia Muslims, and three for Druze.
