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BEIRUT — On the 48th anniversary of the Lebanese civil war Thursday, Beirut is paralyzed. Municipal elections planned for next month are now stalled, the presidential void is entering its sixth month and the judiciary has flip-flopped by lifting a travel ban on the head of the Central Bank, Riad Salameh.
The lifting of the travel ban came ahead of his scheduled hearing in Paris next month concerning a number of alleged money laundering and other financial crimes, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Judge Ghada Aoun had slapped Salameh with the travel ban in January 2022 amid an investigation into allegations of fraud, abuse of public funds and financial misconduct.
Salameh, who has been governor of the Central Bank for three decades, is also being probed by several European countries over his alleged embezzlement of some $330 million to purchase luxury properties in Europe.
A French judge leading a delegation of European judicial officials in Beirut questioned Salameh last month and French prosecutors scheduled a hearing in Paris for May 16. After the travel ban is lifted, Salameh “will have no excuse not to go to France” for the hearing, a judicial official told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.
The embattled governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and refused to attend any hearings with Aoun, who he accuses of bias.
Aoun has been accused by rivals of serving the agenda of former President Michel Aoun, who throughout his term in office repeatedly blamed Salameh and his financial policies for Lebanon’s financial collapse.
The political infighting in Lebanon has left almost all sectors, including the judiciary, ineffective. The political bickering has also left the country without a president for nearly six months, as the deeply divided parliament failed more than 10 times to agree on a presidential candidate.
The current parliament was elected in March of last year, in the first elections that were held after massive nationwide protests against the ruling elite broke out in October 2019. Many Lebanese had hoped the vote would bring about change and remove the entrenched political class that has been ruling the country since the civil war, which ended in 1990. But no change has come.
Voters elect municipal councils for six-year terms. This week, the highly anticipated municipal elections that were due in May now seem further off than ever after parliament speaker Nabih Berri announced that a legislative session next week would discuss a draft law for extending the municipal terms.
The local elections had already been postponed last year, when they would have coincided with the parliamentary elections.
Many analysts say there is no real will among politicians to hold the municipal elections, as municipalities have become yet another tool in their hands to expand their influence amid rampant corruption in the country’s institutions.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawli stressed earlier this month that the polls would be held on time. However, on Wednesday, deputy speaker Elias Bou Saab, who proposed the bill to extend the municipalities' term for another four months, said that the cash-strapped government has failed to secure the necessary funds for the elections.
“It has become impossible to stage the municipal elections,” Bou Saab said at the end of a parliamentary session to discuss the issue of funding the polls.
