BEIRUT, 18 January 2007 — Dozens of demonstrators gathered yesterday in the Lebanese capital to protest at the government’s economic reforms to be delivered before a donor conference in Paris next week. The protest, the fourth in eight days called by the CGTL trade union federation, took place outside the Industry Ministry, with demonstrators waving Lebanese and union flags as security forces stood guard around the building.
“Government resign! You have brought us poverty,” a speaker charged, referring to a spike in consumer prices, especially since last year’s war between the Hezbollah militia and Israel. “We are not against reform, we are against the (government’s) reform program,” the crowd chanted. Scores of soldiers and police cordoned off the ministry near the commercial Hamra Street.
The demonstrations, much smaller than the vast gatherings organized by Hezbollah and its allies in December, were called by the main labor union confederation and backed by the opposition.
The opposition had been counting on the demonstrations to strengthen its own campaign to force Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government, but the turnout has been low.
The union federation and opposition have confronted the reform program due to be submitted to the international donor conference to be held in the French capital on Jan. 25. The reform plan, adopted by the Cabinet on Jan. 4, hinges on raising value-added tax and privatizations.
It will be presented to the so-called Paris III conference during which Lebanon will be helped to reduce its public debt, currently running at $41 billion. The donor conference is expected to be attended by Western countries and oil-rich Arab states which back the Siniora government and its elected anti-Syrian parliamentary majority.
The reform plan approved by Siniora’s Cabinet, which was deserted by six pro-Syrian ministers in November, calls for privatizing the electricity and mobile phone sectors and a two percent hike in VAT.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian man was gravely wounded yesterday when a cluster bomblet fired by Israeli forces during last summer’s war with the Shiite Hezbollah militia exploded, police said. Kamaleddine Mohammed, 44, was gathering wood near the Rashidiyeh Palestinian refugee camp close to the southern port city Tyre when he stepped on a bomblet, they said. He was hospitalized with severe wounds to his head and legs. On Tuesday, a Palestinian refugee was killed near the same area as he tried to extract scrap metal from an unexploded Israeli bomb, police said.
The munitions dropped by Israel during its devastating air war against Lebanon last summer included more than a million cluster bomblets, some 40 percent of which failed to detonate on impact, according to the United Nations. Unexploded ordnance has killed at least 27 people and wounded more than 143 since the conflict ended on Aug. 14, 2006, according to an AFP tally.
