With the support of the main Lebanese Sunni political figures, Shiite Hezbollah and the party of Maronite President Michel Aoun, Moustapha Adib, hitherto Lebanese Ambassador to Germany, was appointed Prime Minister on Monday, August 31, following parliamentary consultations. required by the Constitution of the Land of the Cedar.

The 48-year-old diplomat, unknown to the general public, succeeds Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who resigned a few days after the deadly double explosion that ravaged the port of Beirut and its surroundings on August 4.

>> To read: "In Lebanon, President Michel Aoun calls for the proclamation of a 'secular state'"

Born in Tripoli and of Sunni faith, like his predecessors, in accordance with political usage in Lebanon, based on confessionalism, Moustapha Adib is not affiliated with any political party. But he is close to the former Prime Minister and billionaire Najib Mikati, a political figure in the port city in the north of the country. Moustapha Adib was his chief of staff in the 2010s, before being appointed ambassador to Berlin in 2013.

Local journalists who had known him at the seat of government describe a courteous and efficient man, reports the local daily Annahar.

A Prime Minister loaded with diplomas

Holder of a doctorate in political science and law following a university course in Lebanon and France, he began his career as a university professor of international public law in the early 2000s, working in particular within the Lebanese University. The Lebanese media present him as a specialist in constitutional law and state security issues. Under his full name Moustapha Adib-Abdul-Wahed, he notably defended in 2000 a thesis at Montpellier 1 entitled "The non-execution of military planning laws: from observation to debate".

President of various associations such as the Lebanese Association of International Law (Aldi) or the Lebanese Association of Political Science, he is also President of the Center for Strategic Studies of the Middle East (Cesmo) since 2004.

Moustapha Adib takes the helm of the government at a critical moment for Lebanon, less than a month after the tragedy of August 4 which marked a country already plagued by an acute economic crisis and by a popular protest movement against the political class.

If he enjoys the endorsement of the pillars of the Lebanese political scene, he will still have to convince the protest movement that has agitated the country since October 2019. The protesters had warned that they would reject any name resulting from the consultations of leaders they demand departure.

On social networks, even before his appointment, some Lebanese Internet users have already expressed their rejection of the new Prime Minister, believing that he embodied a certain continuity, not without making fun of the similarity of the letters of the last names between Adib and Diab, his predecessor.

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