The economic crisis in Lebanon continues to escalate dramatically as crises continue to affect the country day after day. The days are not coming for the Lebanese people either through crises, and the shortage of food commodities, energy resources and medicine has become a reality for the Lebanese.

Ongoing crises

The crisis in Lebanon did not stop there. It extended to the inability of the Lebanese to withdraw their money from banks; This caused repeated incidents of violence and storming of various Lebanese banks. The causes of the crisis in Lebanon are due to the collapse of the exchange rate of the Lebanese pound against the American dollar, where the price of one dollar reached tens of thousands of Lebanese pounds.

Strike returns

In this context, the Association of Banks in Lebanon announced the return to the open strike starting from the morning of next Tuesday, March 14th; That is to demand prompt legal measures to put an end to what I have described as the failure to adopt contradictory standards in the issuance of some judgements that drain the remaining funds of all depositors, not some at the expense of others.

In the past few days, the association said, judicial decisions were arbitrary, requiring banks to settle debts they had lent in foreign currency by check drawn against the Bank of Lebanon or the Lebanese pound at the exchange rate of 1,500 pounds to the dollar. Judicial decisions require banks to pay or transfer deposits in foreign currency in cash or in the same currency for some depositors at the expense of others.

A Political Crisis

Raed Al-Khatib, a Lebanese political analyst, says: Lebanon’s economic crisis is mainly caused by a political crisis, where the Lebanese political forces have failed to elect a new president since the end of President Michel Aoun’s term. He explained that this is all because of the political deadlock in the presidency and the government, and that economic solutions related to the political crisis are missing.

The Lebanese political analyst added that there will be no solution or progress in the economic files, because the crisis, although it looks like an economic one, but it is linked causally to the political performance in light of the continuing vacuum, Lebanon will not be able to approve the reforms within the framework of a comprehensive and logical plan and implement it; Negotiation with the IMF would be an impossible corridor to a solution.

He stressed that the Lebanese are living through this period of the consequences of the collapse, which starts from politics to the economy and monetary, and the most dangerous element in the Lebanese scene is the fatal oddity that translates to the worsening of the crisis at all levels; This increases the risk that it will mutate and expand beyond the people’s capacity to bear and the ability of a country to emerge from.