Macron in Lebanon with a call to sweep away old era

Bloomberg

French President Emmanuel Macron returned to Lebanon for the second time since a blast devastated the capital Beirut, calling for sweeping changes to help the former French colony overcome a financial and political crisis decades in the making.
“The objective of this visit is clearly to mark an end to a political chapter,” Macron said in televised comments after arriving in Beirut.
Macron said his country was ready to host another international aid conference for Lebanon in October but urged the next administration to pursue wide-ranging reforms to revive an economy already in freefall before the latest disaster struck. Paris co-hosted with the United Nations an online meeting in the aftermath of the August 4 explosion that drew $300 million in disaster relief.
Many international donors, including France, have made a point of channeling resources directly through institutions and charities on the ground, sidestepping a ruling elite accused by its people of entrenched corruption and patronage that’s emptied state coffers and brought the economy to knees.
During his first visit to Lebanon, two days after the blast that killed more than 180 people, injured thousands and caused as much as $4.6 billion worth of damage, Macron met with political leaders from across the spectrum urging them to implement a raft of reforms to help unlock billions of dollars in assistance from around the world.
On his return, Macron said he’d had no hand in picking Mustafa Adib, the academic and diplomat nominated as Lebanon’s new prime minister-elect hours before his arrival. Local media had reported that Adib was Macron’s preferred choice for the post vacated when the previous government resigned in the wake of the explosion, caused by a vast consignment of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut.
Lebanon defaulted on $30 billion in international debts this year and embarked on talks with the International Monetary Fund for help securing $10 billion in support for a proposed economic overhaul. But negotiations stalled as Lebanese officials bickered over the who should carry the cost of the financial meltdown. In the meantime, the country’s currency has collapsed, triggering triple-digit food inflation and wiping out the savings of much of the population.
Weeks of mass protests calling for the removal of the ruling establishment that began in October were briefly reignited after the blast, but few practical reforms have been made to unlock IMF aid or more than $11 billion in loans and grants pledged to Lebanon at the Paris-hosted CEDRE conference in 2018.
Paris, which has hosted a number of international aid conferences for Lebanon since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, has said an IMF bailout was now Lebanon’s only option to restore confidence.
France maintains close ties with Lebanon, which it ruled until independence in 1943. Such was the disillusionment of Lebanese with their political system that some signed a petition during Macron’s last visit, urging Paris to restore tutelage.