Lebanon: ICJ president Nawaf Salam chosen as prime minister

Nawaf Salam, president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), was nominated as Lebanon’s prime minister on Monday.
Salam secured the backing of 85 lawmakers out of 128, following a day of parliamentary consultations led by newly elected President Joseph Aoun.
If able to form a government, Salam will replace Najib Mikati, whose administration has been functioning in a caretaker capacity for over two years.
Salam's designation comes without the support of Lebanon’s Shia MPs, mostly represented by Hezbollah and its ally, the Amal movement. Hezbollah lent its support to Mikati to continue in his post.
Under Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of parliament a Shia.
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Salam served as Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations from 2007 to 2017 before joining the ICJ in 2018. He was elected president of the court in February last year.
Some of his backers view Salam as a relatively impartial figure outside of Lebanon's political class.
Al-Akhbar newspaper, which is close to Hezbollah, described Salam's nomination as akin to a "complete US coup" on its website's homepage on Monday.
Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad said that the group had "extended its hand" last week by electing Aoun as president last week, but had now found its "hand cut off".
The next step will be to form a new government - a process that has in the past taken weeks, and even months, due to political divisions.
The new government will be tasked with dealing with a severe economic crisis, which has persisted for over five years and resulted in the lira losing almost 100 percent of its value.
It will also be faced with the task of reconstructing the country after over a year of Israeli bombardment, which was halted by a fragile ceasefire that came into effect in late November.
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