Lebanon civil servants strike, demand cabinet formation

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.

Source: No progress on formation of new Lebanon 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.