Lebanon’s newly elected parliament was holding its first session Tuesday, with lawmakers expected to choose the country's longtime parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, for a seventh four-year term. His reelection is practically guaranteed, even though there are more than a dozen new lawmakers who won seats running on a reform platform.
The new legislature is being ushered in as Lebanon remains in the grip of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the ruling class, which has been running the country since the end of the civil war.
