BEIRUT: Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is striving to set up a new government ahead of the holidays season as new hitches popped up, casting a pall of gloom over the entire Cabinet formation process, sources close to the process said Thursday.

Hariri met with MP Walid Jumblatt Thursday night as part of his intensive consultations with leaders to clear the way for the formation of a national unity government comprising the country’s major political parties before the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Hariri did not speak to reporters after the meeting held at Jumblatt’s residence in Beirut’s Clemenceau neighborhood. Sources said the meeting was designed to discuss the Druze representation in an expanded 30-member government.

In addition to former MP Ghattas Khoury, Nader Hariri, chief of Hariri’s staff, Jumblatt’s son and daughter, Taymour and Dalia, caretaker Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, former Minister Ghazi Aridi, the meeting was also attended by MP Marwan Hamade and former MP Ayman Shoukair, who are widely tipped to represent Jumblatt’s bloc in the new government.

“Prime Minister Hariri is racing against time to form a new government before the holiday season so that President Michel Aoun’s mandate can get off to a promising start,” a source close to the Cabinet formation process told The Daily Star. “Without a government, the new administration cannot do anything or take any decisions to solve the country’s political and economic problems.”

After major hurdles over the distribution of key ministerial portfolios have been overcome, Hariri was widely expected to announce a 24-member Cabinet lineup after his meeting with Aoun at Baabda Palace Wednesday.

But no Cabinet announcement was made and Hariri, in a brief statement after the meeting reflecting continuing obstacles, told reporters: “The matter still requires further consultations.”

Hariri did not elaborate on the new snags that prevented the announcement of the Cabinet lineup. But the same source said that disagreement over the size of the government, whether it should be a 24- or 30-member body, was one of the new hurdles that emerged, delaying the formation.

Aoun and Hariri prefer a 24-member Cabinet, while Speaker Nabih Berri and Hezbollah back an expanded 30-member government in order to include their allies in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the Baath Party and MP Talal Arslan, the source said.

Jumblatt, the Progressive Socialist Party leader, has also called for a 30-member Cabinet with balanced representation for the Marada Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party.

“Another snag was that Aoun proposed [former minister] Yaqoub Sarraf as defense minister, a proposal that was immediately rejected by the Future Movement and the Lebanese Forces,” the source said.

Sarraf, a Greek Orthodox, had served as a minister during former President Emile Lahoud’s mandate and was close to Hezbollah.

Similarly, the LF refuses that the Kataeb Party’s representation in the government be done at its expense, the source said.

After Berri conceded the Public Works Ministry, which was coveted by the LF, to the Marada Movement as a means of facilitating the Cabinet formation, the LF will be allocated the Health Ministry, in addition to the Information Ministry and the post of the deputy prime minister, the source said.

Other sources blamed long-simmering tension between Aoun and Berri for the Cabinet standoff. In response to Berri’s decision to concede the Public Works Ministry to MP Sleiman Frangieh’s Marada Movement, Aoun demanded that a Shiite minister be allocated as part of his team, which the speaker rejected.

The Future Movement’s parliamentary bloc reiterated its call for the swift formation of a new government in order to restore confidence in the state and its institutions and set the wheel of the economy and production into motion.

“The announcement of the formation of a national accord government by Prime Minister Saad Hariri has become an urgent necessity at various levels, especially since it will be the first government of [Aoun’s] term on which the Lebanese are pinning great hopes,” the bloc said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting chaired by former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.A similar plea for a quick Cabinet formation was made by Hezbollah’s parliamentary Loyalty to the Resistance bloc.

A statement issued after the bloc’s weekly meeting called for facilitating Hariri’s mission to “accelerate the formation of a national unity government in which everyone will participates in shouldering responsibility in this critical transitional stage.” It stressed that Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s proposal for an electoral law based on full proportional representation was the “mandatory path to the rise of the state.”

For his part, LF chief Samir Geagea denied that his party was putting a veto on any political party’s participation in the government, but called for a homogeneous government.

“There is no problem in the Cabinet makeup and there is no veto on anyone because some are portraying that the LF is obstructing,”Geagea said at an educational conference held at his residence in Maarab. “For the sake of the people, the government should be a solid uniform block.”

Geagea said the LF does not mind having a government with 24 or 30 ministers. “We should have an effective and productive government.”

“If anyone has any objection against the appointment of a certain minister, let them speak on their behalf and not on behalf of the LF,” Geagea said. “We are flexible regarding the Cabinet formation.”

Meanwhile, Berri called for the adoption of a new electoral law based on proportional representation with expanded districts ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

“Now that we are on the edge of Parliament’s silver jubilee, we shall realize a national accomplishment Lebanon and the Lebanese deserve by passing a modern electoral law based on enlarged constituencies and proportional law,” Berri said in a speech at his Ain al-Tineh residence during the launch of a mobile phone app that allows the public to track legislative proposals. “We should not let any matter compel the Lebanese to elect on the basis of a law adopted 60 years ago, nor shall we allow the repetition of the same mistake when two young generations could not, back then, express their opinions and participate in lawmaking.”

Rival politicians are at odds over a new electoral law to govern parliamentary elections scheduled in May 2017. Lebanese parties are divided between adopting a proportional vote law, or a hybrid electoral law that includes aspects of the proportional and winner-take-all systems. The current 1960 winner-take-all system, which was used in the last elections in 2009, divides constituencies based on administrative districts.