Saad Hariri resigned as Prime Minister of Lebanon on Tuesday (October 29th) under pressure from the streets. The televised announcement was greeted by the cheers of the crowd who listened to live on several gathering places, before the national anthem resumed by the protesters sounded loud and clear. Fireworks were immediately fired in Beirut as cars crisscrossed the capital all screaming horns in sign of victory.
The 49-year-old businessman, born in Saudi Arabia, was pushed into politics in 2005 after the assassination of his father, billionaire Rafic Hariri. He inherited an immense fortune from the Saudi Oger construction company - which went bankrupt in 2017. Last September, Saad Hariri was forced to announce the suspension of his television channel, Future TV, close to his political party, Courant du futur. According to Forbes, his fortune was estimated at $ 1.5 billion in 2018.
Take back the Sunni torch
The entry into politics of Saad Hariri aims to take over the torch of the patriarch, the former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, assassinated February 14, 2005 in a car bomb in Beirut. An attack on the car bomb that plunged Lebanon into turmoil.
In a confessional system where the prime minister must be a Sunni - while the president must be a Maronite Christian, and the Speaker of Parliament, Shiite - he then embarks on the battle, seeing himself forced to deal with the powerful Hezbollah, while trying to limit the influence of this Shiite movement and its Iranian ally. However, he will never be able to win against this formation, the only one in Lebanon to have kept his weapons after the end of the civil war (1975-1990).
Since his first accession to power in 2009, Saad Hariri has led three governments in a country accustomed to repeated political crises. Its first "unity government" had died in 2011 after the resignation of Hezbollah camp ministers, unhappy with the accusations made against them in the investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Saad Hariri then left the country for many years, living especially in Paris, for questions of "security" according to his family.
Under pressure Souadienne
Back in power in 2016 to counterbalance Hezbollah, Saad Hariri was subjected to very strong pressure from Saudi Arabia. To the point of finding himself at the heart of a fantastic soap opera in November 2017 when he was held in Riyadh by the royal family, traditional ally and financial support of his family. He had been forced to announce his resignation on television from Saudi Arabia, and to denounce in this speech the "seizure" of Hezbollah and Iran over Lebanon. Saad Hariri had then had to rely on an intervention from France to get out of this beehive.
>> To read: Saad Hariri resigned or detained in Riyadh? Rumors and suspicions in Lebanon
Saad Hariri's political frailty was also revealed in the last legislative elections of May 2018, when his party, the Courant du Futur, lost one-third of its seats in parliament. After eight months of negotiations between the various political and religious components of the country, Prime Minister Hariri had retained a central, stabilizing position in the political game.
The popular uprising born on October 17, however, is of a new kind. The demands relate to political corruption and government inaction to address the country's infrastructure needs. The fear of a financial collapse, due to the country's over-indebtedness - 141% of GDP, one of the highest rates in the world - is keeping the banks under pressure. The head of government has tried to convince the demonstrators by highlighting his willingness to carry out reforms to get the country out of the economic doldrums. In vain. After two weeks of protest, Saad Hariri returns his apron. "The revolution is not over," chants the crowd in the street, a few hours after his resignation.
With AFP