Speaker’s long tenure embodies Lebanon’s political stasis
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s longtime parliament speaker Nabih Berri often seems like a veteran schoolteacher with a class of unruly students, using threats and jokes and occasional gavel-pounding to keep the assembly in order.
The 80-year-old has held the job for a quarter-century, and is set to be re-elected as speaker for a sixth time on Wednesday, when the new assembly convenes after national elections earlier this month — the first in nine years.
That he faces no challengers, and rarely has over the years, owes much to Lebanon’s sectarian-based and elite-dominated political system, which has mostly kept the peace since the 1975-1990 civil war, but has also spawned political paralysis and endemic corruption.
Berri is seen by some as an embodiment of that system, which shows no signs of changing despite rising discontent. But the parliament speaker, who is one of Lebanon’s most influential and enduring politicians, is also seen as a moderate, unifying figure who lifted his Shiite community’s profile and role in the country’s postwar politics, often acting as mediator among feuding Lebanese factions.