Lebanon's prime minister-designate Saad Hariri has quit after failing to form a government in the nine months since a devastating port explosion rocked Beirut.
Mr Hariri cited what he called "key differences" with President Michel Aoun for the decision, deepening a political crisis that has left the Lebanese without a government as they endured an unprecedented economic meltdown.
With no clear candidate to replace Mr Hariri, Lebanon is likely to slide deeper into chaos and uncertainty.
Prospects for forming a government to undertake desperately needed reforms and talks for a recovery package with the International Monetary Fund are now even more remote.
Poverty has soared in the past several months and dire shortages of medicines, fuel and electricity have marked what the World Bank describes as one of the world's worst economic crisis of the past 150 years.
"I have excused myself from forming the government," Mr Hariri said on Thursday local time after a 20-minute meeting with the President.
"May God help the country."
Later, Mr Hariri — one of Lebanon's most prominent Sunni Muslim leaders — told a local television station that he had no intention of endorsing a replacement.
According to Lebanon's sectarian-based political system, the prime minister is picked from the ranks of Sunnis.
Without Mr Hariri's backing, prospects of forming a government diminish even further.
Mr Aoun said he would soon set a date for consultations with parliamentary blocs on naming a new prime minister-designate.
Mr Hariri said that when this happened, his bloc would "consult with our friends and allies and see what to do".
After news broke of Mr Hariri stepping down, protesters — mostly his supporters — blocked roads and set fire to tyres in several parts of Beirut, decrying the deepening crisis.
Troops deployed to break up a protest at the edge of Beirut fired in the air and used armoured vehicles to open roads. Protesters pelted the soldiers with stones.
The national currency, in freefall since the crisis erupted in late 2019, plunged to a new low, selling for more than 20,000 to the US dollar on the black market.
The Lebanese pound, pegged to the dollar for 30 years, has lost more than 90 per cent of its value.
'Yet another terrible incident'
France's Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, whose country ruled Lebanon for about 25 years until its independence after World War II, called the failure to form a new government "yet another terrible incident" demonstrating "the inability of the Lebanese leaders to find a solution to the crisis that they have generated".
"They totally failed to acknowledge the political and economic situation of their country," he told reporters at UN headquarters in New York after chairing a Security Council meeting on Libya.
"We are a few days from the first anniversary of the blast in Beirut" at the port that killed and wounded thousands, Mr Le Drian said.
But he said there are political leaders in the country, starting with Mr Aoun, "and it is for them to react".
In a last-ditch effort to end the deadlock, Mr Hariri had proposed a 24-member Cabinet to Mr Aoun on Wednesday, and said he expected a response from the president by Thursday.
Mr Aoun, who has blamed Mr Hariri for the deadlock, said the premier-designate had rejected the idea of changing any names on the proposed list, indicating he already planned to step down and "was finding a pretext to justify his decision".
International calls have mounted for Lebanese leaders to form a new government. In an unusual move, the French and US ambassadors to Beirut recently travelled to Saudi Arabia to discuss Lebanon with Saudi officials.
The two said Lebanon was in "desperate need" of a new, pro-reform government to lead it out of its economic and financial crisis.
But for months, the effort has been blocked by a power struggle between Mr Hariri on one side and Mr Aoun and his son-in-law, Gebran Bassil, who heads the largest bloc in parliament, on the other.
Nabil Bou Monsef, a political commentator for the An-Nahar newspaper, said that naming a new prime minister would now be even more difficult.
"We may not be able to form a government or find an alternative to Saad Hariri," he said.
"President Michel Aoun will now consider himself victorious in getting rid of Saad Hariri. But in reality, [Mr Aoun] has opened the gates of hell for the whole country and his rule."
Lebanon's economy contracted by over 20 per cent in 2020 and poverty deepened, with more than 55 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.
AP
