Mikati succeeds in Baabda and fails in Tripoli

It was as if the Establishment's candidate had failed before he was even designated. On the same day that the key figures of this regime converged to Baabda Palace to name Najib Mikati, a citizen in the Bab Al Ramel neighborhood in Tripoli set himself on fire.

A scene that encapsulates Lebanon’s entire tragedy. The wealthiest man in the ruling Establishment is appointed as PM-designate, bolstered by the support of his sect, versus another man from the same city, the poorest city in the Mediterranean, who expresses the suffering of an entire country, and finds no other way of salvation but death.

Media propaganda, promises of aid, and a back and forth "ballet" of hopeless and unavoidable visits to Baabda Palace. This same Establishment, with the same faces, repeats the same tragedy.

We state it explicitly.

This Establishment is unable to form a government in a timely manner.

Even if it forms a government, this Establishment will be unable to carry out the necessary reforms, and in the absence of reforms, we will receive neither aid nor IMF support.

It no longer has the legitimacy to correct what it has done. Most of what it is trying to do is patch up a dire reality by talking about ration cards, shipments of fuel, and Iranian gasoline, which we have not seen yet.

We have said it before and will say it again: The solution begins with a government that is independent of the ruling Establishment and its networks of interests.

A government that derives its legitimacy from the people in order to be confident that it is working to protect them and ensure their security and future.

The task is difficult, and our only option today, in the midst of the state's blatant power vacuum and its disastrous consequences for the economy, finances, electricity, and medicine, is to confront a regime willing to sacrifice our children, health, future, security, and dignity to protect its own interests.

We know their tricks, the theatrical show of the PM designation, and the declining dollar price; they will not enrich the poor and save them from hunger, and the fatal answer came from Tripoli.

Leave them performing their theatrical play on the stage alone... Leave your seats and go out into the street. Prepare to lift their immunities on August 4; this is the beginning of salvation.