Lebanon’s Speaker Nabih Berri, undefeated guardian of status quo

Beirut – Skilfully riding decades of turbulence and shifting political tides, Nabih Berri is returning for a seventh consecutive term as speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, despite growing popular demands for fresh faces.

At 84, he is one of the world’s longest serving legislative chiefs, having held his post for the past 30 years, a feat no other Lebanese politician has accomplished.

In a confessional system where the speaker’s post is reserved for a Shiite Muslim, Berri has become one of his community’s most successful leaders and one of the most influential political operatives in Lebanon’s history. 

Famous for his quick wit and shrewd politicking, Berri won another four-year term on Tuesday, gaining votes from 65 of parliament’s 128 members at their inaugural session.  

The tall, light-eyed politician heads the Amal Movement and is a close ally of the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah. Together, the two parties hold all the 27 Shiite-allocated seats in parliament. 

A lawyer by training, Berri was a militia leader during the 1975-1990 civil war and transitioned to politics as the conflict ended. 

His career since has mirrored the Shiite community’s steadily rising clout in a country where it had long been marginalised both economically and politically. 

Over the past three decades, he has fashioned himself into a mediator among Lebanon’s deeply divided political factions and their foreign patrons, sealing his reputation as the indispensible guardian of the status quo. 

“There is no one else… that can play the role that he plays,” Elie Ferzli, Berri’s longest-serving deputy in parliament, told AFP.

– Africa connection –

Like many Lebanese from the south, Berri’s parents looked towards Africa for opportunities. He was born in Sierra Leone on January 28, 1938.

There, Berri became childhood friends with Jamil Said Mohamed — nicknamed the country’s “diamond king”.

Berri is widely believed to have amassed his early fortune alongside Jamil, who exercised near-presidential powers in Sierra Leone according to a 2002 report by that country’s diplomat and academic Lansana Gberie.

One of the most powerful Lebanese in Africa, Jamil influenced ministerial decisions and appointments and routinely violated government foreign exchange and banking regulations, Gberie says.

Back in Lebanon, Berri earned a law degree from the state-run Lebanese University in 1963 before completing post-graduate law studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.

During Lebanon’s war, he rose to prominence by taking over the leadership of the Amal movement in 1980, two years after the mysterious disappearance in Libya of its founder, Imam Mussa Sadr.

In 1984, he led his militiamen in an uprising against the US- and Israeli-backed regime of president Amin Gemayel.

Between 1985 and 1988, he helped crush supporters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the so-called “war of the camps”.

In 1988, his militia fought a deadly power struggle with Hezbollah, which took control of almost all the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut and swathes of Lebanon’s Shiite-dominated south.

Amal continued to fight against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon until the latter withdrew in 2000. 

– Financial tentacles –

Like many of Lebanon’s warlords, Berri transitioned to politics when the frontlines went quiet, making himself an indispensable ally to Syria, which kept its troops in Lebanon. 

Berri was named minister several times between 1984 and 1992. That year, in the first elections after the war ended, Berri was simultaneously elected a member and speaker of parliament — the highest post for a Shiite in the country’s sectarian political system. 

Since Berri’s entry into parliament, politicians aligned with him have virtually always won in legislative elections. 

He is known to speak off-the-cuff, even while chairing parliamentary sessions, which typically involve a lot of gavel-banging.

For Western countries that cannot publicly hold meetings with the terror-listed Hezbollah, including the United States, Berri has become a main point of contact.

Outside of politics, Berri commands a vast multinational business empire, with financial tentacles that are difficult to trace. 

Critics accuse him of filling up his coffers by syphoning off public funds and distributing key government jobs to his cronies.

Berri and his wife Randa have long been accused of taking cuts off profits made through contracts with the Council for the South, a state-run development body, according to a leaked 2009 US cable.

In another leaked US embassy cable, the Berri family’s net worth was already estimated at around $2 billion in 2006. 

Berri is married and has nine children, six of them from a previous marriage.