Saad Hariri named Lebanon’s new prime minister

Newly elected president Michel Aoun asks the former PM and leading Sunni political figure to form new government

By Agencies 3 November 2016, 2:14 pm
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri waves to journalists, shown before his election upon his arrival to the parliament building in Beirut, Lebanon, October 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Leading Sunni political figure Saad Hariri was named as Lebanon’s new prime minister on Thursday, the office of President Michel Aoun announced.

“After the necessary parliamentary consultations… the president has entrusted Saad Hariri with the formation of a government,” said a statement read by the president’s chief of staff Antoine Choukeir.

The nomination comes days after Aoun was elected, with Hariri’s surprise support, ending a vacuum of more than two years.

Hariri was endorsed by 110 members of the 127-seat parliament, with only the Shiite Hezbollah movement, the Syrian Social National Party and the Lebanese Baath party — all supporters of Syria’s government — declining to back him as prime minister.

But his return was assured as part of the deal he struck to throw his support behind former general Michel Aoun, a former army commander and Hezbollah ally who was elected president by Parliament on Monday.

Supporters of Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement celebrate the election of their leader Michel Aoun in the town of Jdeideh, north of Beirut, on October 31, 2016. (AFP PHOTO/MARWAN TAHTAH)

Hariri returns to the post of prime minister five years after his last cabinet collapsed when his longtime rival Hezbollah and its allies pulled their ministers from a unity government that had taken months to form.

He is the son of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a massive seaside bombing in 2005 in Beirut.

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