Lebanon finally has a president and prime minister attempting to rebuild the state. Parliament must hold them accountable—but it must not become an instrument for restoring the political establishment they were chosen to replace. They offer Lebanon something it has lacked for far too long: honest leadership, functioning institutions and allegiance to Lebanon alone.
Photo illustration- Lebanon’s choice: Protect the clean leadership of Nawaf Salam—or return to the political-financial establishment that enriched the powerful while ordinary citizens lost their homes and savings.
By : Ya Libnan Editor Board, Opinion
Lebanon has spent decades watching its political establishment obstruct, weaken or remove anyone who seriously attempts to reform the state. Today, the country may be witnessing another such maneuver—this time directed against Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
Mustafa Hamdan, secretary of the leadership body of the Independent Nasserist Movement–Al-Mourabitoun, has warned that the parliamentary session is being used to target the office of the premiership and Prime Minister Salam personally.
According to Hamdan, political forces are already promoting former Prime Minister Najib Mikati in regional and international circles as a possible replacement. He alleges that representatives of foreign countries concerned with Lebanon have even been approached with the argument that Mikati could more easily facilitate direct or indirect negotiations.
These are serious allegations. They should be investigated and publicly answered.
But whether every detail has yet been independently verified or not, the political context makes the warning impossible to dismiss.
Hezbollah and the Amal Movement did not support Salam when he was nominated prime minister. They preferred Mikati to remain in office. Salam nevertheless received the support of 84 members of Parliament, reflecting a powerful national demand for change.
His government later won the confidence of 95 deputies—including deputies from Hezbollah and Amal.
Those political forces cannot legitimately support the government when convenient, obstruct it when displeased and then attempt to remove its prime minister because he refuses to surrender the authority of the Lebanese state.
Why Salam has become a target
The motive is not difficult to understand.
Prime Minister Salam and President Joseph Aoun constitute the best governing partnership Lebanon has had in at least five decades. Together, they have attempted to restore the constitutional order: one president, one government, one army and one sovereign state.
Salam has insisted that decisions of war and peace belong exclusively to the Lebanese state. His government removed from its policy statement the language traditionally used to legitimize Hezbollah’s independent military role. It declared that only the state has the right to bear arms and defend Lebanon.
That position directly challenges the system of parallel authority Hezbollah and its political allies have protected for decades.
Speaker Nabih Berri has also publicly opposed the government’s diplomatic direction. He rejected the U.S.-brokered framework between Lebanon and Israel and argued that Lebanon’s future should remain connected to negotiations between Iran and the United States.
That raises a fundamental question: Should Lebanon’s sovereignty be negotiated by the Lebanese government—or should it remain dependent upon Tehran’s interests?
Any attempt to replace Salam with Mikati would therefore not be an ordinary change of government. It would risk reversing Lebanon’s limited progress toward restoring the authority of its constitutional institutions.
Why return Lebanon to the Mikati era?
Najib Mikati does not represent the clean break Lebanon desperately needs. His record is inseparable from the political and financial establishment that presided over the country’s collapse.
Between 2010 and 2013, Mikati, members of his family and companies associated with them reportedly benefited from nine subsidized housing loans totaling approximately $14 million.
These credits were backed by Banque du Liban and intended to make housing affordable, especially for Lebanese citizens of modest means.
Consider the obscenity of that arrangement: while poor and middle-class families struggled to purchase modest homes, one of Lebanon’s wealthiest families obtained millions of dollars in subsidized housing credits.
Prosecutor Ghada Aoun later charged Mikati, his son and others with illicit enrichment in connection with the loans. Mikati denied wrongdoing and maintained that they complied with central-bank regulations.
The case was eventually dismissed on statute-of-limitations grounds—not following a trial that examined all the evidence and cleared the defendants on the merits.
Whatever the ultimate legal judgment, the political and moral question remains unavoidable:
Why was one of Lebanon’s wealthiest families receiving millions of dollars in subsidized housing credits while ordinary Lebanese families could not afford homes?
The controversy did not end there.
In 2024, two anti-corruption organizations filed a complaint in France against Mikati and members of his family, seeking an investigation into alleged financial crimes, including money laundering. The complaint drew particular attention to financial transfers involving Mikati’s family and Banque du Liban.
Mikati rejected those allegations and insisted that his family’s wealth had been acquired legally and transparently. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and the allegations must be resolved through an independent judicial process.
But Lebanon is equally entitled to ask why a former prime minister surrounded by such serious unresolved questions should be presented as the man to replace one of the cleanest prime ministers in the country’s modern history.
Mikati’s protection of Riad Salameh
Mikati also politically defended former Banque du Liban governor Riad Salameh when Salameh was already facing investigations in Lebanon and Europe.
In December 2021, Mikati declared:
“One does not change their officers during a war.”
But what war was Lebanon fighting?
The Lebanese people were fighting poverty.
Depositors were fighting to recover their life savings.
Families were fighting to obtain food, medicine, electricity and affordable housing.
The Lebanese pound was collapsing, banks were denying depositors access to their own money, and the financial system supervised by Salameh was disintegrating.
Rather than treating this catastrophe as a reason to change the leadership of the central bank, Mikati invoked the language of war to justify keeping Salameh in office.
There was no military battle requiring Salameh to remain at his post. The real battle was the Lebanese people’s struggle against financial ruin—and Salameh was hardly the officer they needed to protect.
Salameh later became wanted through an Interpol Red Notice following European arrest warrants connected to massive financial-corruption and money-laundering allegations. He has denied wrongdoing.
Mikati’s defense of Salameh does not by itself establish complicity. But it reveals a political instinct Lebanon can no longer afford: when a powerful member of the establishment comes under investigation, protect the official rather than the public.
Replacing Nawaf Salam with Najib Mikati would therefore not constitute renewal.
It would represent the restoration of the political-financial order Lebanon should be investigating—not bringing back.
Accountability must not become political assassination
Prime Minister Salam may be the cleanest and most institutionally minded person to occupy the Grand Serail since Abdallah al-Yafi.
He did not enter politics as the representative of a militia, a sectarian dynasty or a financial empire. He arrived with the reputation of an internationally respected jurist and former president of the International Court of Justice.
President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam are not beyond criticism. No democratic leader should be. Parliament possesses both the right and the constitutional responsibility to question the government and hold it accountable.
But accountability must not be transformed into political assassination.
Nor should the office of the prime minister become a bargaining chip controlled by the speaker of Parliament, Hezbollah or any foreign-backed political arrangement.
Lebanon’s Constitution provides a clear process for choosing a prime minister through binding parliamentary consultations conducted by the president. It does not give any party or sectarian alliance the right to select a more accommodating replacement through arrangements negotiated behind closed doors.
If Mikati—or anyone else—wishes to become prime minister, he must obtain parliamentary support through the constitutional process, not through private understandings promoted in foreign capitals.
Foreign governments must also be careful not to become instruments in an internal campaign to weaken a prime minister precisely because he is attempting to restore Lebanese sovereignty.
Lebanon has repeatedly changed governments while preserving the same failed political order. What the country needs now is not another rearrangement of familiar names. It needs continuity in reform, institutional stability and sufficient time for the Aoun–Salam partnership to produce results.
The Lebanese people have already paid an unbearable price for corruption, sectarianism, foreign allegiance and weapons operating outside the authority of the state. They should not be forced back into the very system from which they are struggling to escape.
The message to Speaker Berri, Hezbollah and every politician attempting to engineer Lebanon’s future behind closed doors should be unmistakable:
Hands off Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
Let Parliament scrutinize his government. Let the judiciary investigate wrongdoing wherever it exists. Let the Lebanese people ultimately judge his record.
But do not remove one of Lebanon’s cleanest prime ministers simply because he is finally trying to make the Lebanese Republic function as a sovereign state.
Lebanon needs the Aoun–Salam partnership to continue—not the failed political order of the past to return.
