Judiciary’s clash with banks threatens Lebanon’s elections

An escalating confrontation between Lebanon’s judiciary and the battered banking sector appears to have overshadowed ongoing preparations to hold parliamentary elections on time, raising fears that judicial rulings against some leading banks might eventually lead to scuttling the vote altogether.

President Michel Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), the main Christian political party founded by Aoun and now headed by his son-in-law, MP Gebran Bassil, have been accused by their political opponents of standing behind the judicial campaign against Lebanese banks to delay or even derail the elections deemed “crucial” by the international community and most of the Lebanese people.

The Lebanese, reeling from the worst economic meltdown in the country’s history, are hoping that the polls, scheduled on May 15, will be an opportunity to bring about an overdue political change. It’s hoped this will steer Lebanon out of the crisis, described by the World Bank as one of the world’s worst since the 1850s, posing the gravest threat to its stability since the 1975-90 Civil War.