Date: Sep 19, 2018 Source: The Daily Star Govt delay is biggest mistake for Aoun’s term: Hariri Geagea: Govt negotiations 'back to square one' Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star BEIRUT: The delay in the formation of a new government is posing a major challenge to the country and hurting President Michel Aoun’s term, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said Tuesday, calling on political rivals to lower their demands to help break the monthslong impasse. Despite a new flurry of political activity aimed at reconciling the parties’ conflicting demands for key ministerial portfolios, Hariri said there was nothing new so far regarding any progress in the crisis. Amid the row over the issue of prerogatives in the government formation, triggered by his draft Cabinet formula, Hariri stressed that he was abiding by the Constitution in his attempts to set up a new Cabinet. “Today, a government must be formed. The biggest mistake for [Aoun’s] term and the country is the delay in the government formation,” Hariri told reporters before chairing the weekly meeting of the Future Movement’s parliamentary bloc at his Downtown Beirut residence. He lamented that the process was being obstructed by parties’ haggling over ministerial posts. Hariri said achievements for Aoun’s term should be made through “government action and providing electricity, water and roads, making the CEDRE conference succeed and getting out of the economic impasse.” “The dispute over portfolios will lead nowhere,” he said. Hariri, who was appointed on May 24 to form a national unity government representing all the main political parties, reiterated his call for competing political sides to compromise. He said the Cabinet formation was still being held up by demands of the Lebanese Forces, the Progressive Socialist Party and the Marada Movement. “I have already said that the government should be a national entente government that includes all the main parties and on which the president and I agree,” Hariri said. “I have said that all political parties must be humble [in their demands] in order for the government to be formed. But if each side wants to keep the other out, the government will not be formed.” The Cabinet formation process, which is nearing its fifth month of deadlock, has been stalled by the issue of Christian representation, fiercely contested between the Free Patriotic Movement and the LF, and the problem of Druze representation. The LF is pushing for significant Cabinet representation commensurate with the results of the May 6 parliamentary elections, in which it nearly doubled its MPs from eight to 15. Similarly, PSP leader Walid Joumblatt in insisting on naming the three ministers reserved for the Druze sect in the new government, with the aim of excluding his Druze rival, MP Talal Arslan, an ally of the FPM. The Marada Movement, headed by former MP Sleiman Frangieh, insists on retaining the Public Works Ministry, or substituting it with the Energy Ministry, currently held by the FPM. Hariri presented his first draft Cabinet formula to Aoun on Sept. 3, but it has not succeeded in breaking the deadlock after having failed to gain the support of Aoun and the FPM. Aoun voiced a number of reservations over the formula, particularly over the allocation of ministerial posts to the LF and the PSP. The formula has also sparked a heated row between the FPM, founded by Aoun, and Hariri’s Future Movement, over the prerogatives of the president and the prime minister-designate in forming a government. Asked to comment on a statement issued Tuesday by the FPM’s parliamentary Strong Lebanon bloc that if the president did not have the main role in the next government, then there would be no government, Hariri said: “If we want to rely on popularity, let it be. Let us change the Constitution and do this. During the last parliamentary elections, there were political parties who also won, but we said that we want to represent in this government the main blocs. Some will not be represented, like the independents and other parties. The political representation of the main political blocs must be proportionate, but who decides this? The prime minister decides, in agreement with the president of the republic, full stop.” Asked to comment on Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai’s call for the formation of a neutral government to save the country, Hariri said: “Any government must result from an agreement between the president and me.” Hariri said he was in contact with Speaker Nabih Berri about a legislative session the speaker plans to call for soon to ratify a raft of draft laws already approved by joint parliamentary committees. Asked if he agrees to holding a session while the government is serving in a caretaker capacity, he said: “If there are very necessary items that we agree on, I think that there are important items related to the CEDRE conference.” During the weekly meeting of the Future bloc he chaired, Hariri emphasized that cooperation between him and Aoun was essential for the government formation and the protection of political stability. “The prime minister-designate stressed that cooperation and joint responsibility between the presidency and the premiership are a necessity, both during the formation process and after the birth of the government,” a statement issued after the bloc’s meeting said. “In this sense, it should not be subject to debate and discussion because it constitutes a basis for the protection of political stability and setting the wheels of government action in motion.” The FPM’s Strong Lebanon bloc called for respecting the role and rights of the president. “What we are demanding from the [new] government is to respect the results of parliamentary elections so as to constitute a safety valve to achieve a real national partnership and respect of the position, role and rights of the presidency as a main component in the formation process, especially after the [political] settlement” that took place, MP Ibrahim Kanaan told reporters after the bloc’s weekly meeting. He was referring to the 2016 political settlement reached between the Future Movement and the FPM that led to Aoun’s election as president and brought Hariri back to the premiership. Geagea: Govt negotiations 'back to square one' BEIRUT: Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has said his party was sticking to its initial demands for Cabinet shares, after the LF’s most recent compromises were turned down by its rival, the Free Patriotic Movement. “After what happened in the government formation file, [we think] intentions are not good, and we are back to square one,” Geagea told reporters Tuesday, according to remarks published on the LF’s website Wednesday. Geagea said the LF would stand firm on its demand for 30 percent of the ministerial shares allocated for the Christian community, which he said should be at least five ministers in the event of a 30-member Cabinet. On Sept. 3, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri's Cabinet formula, which was handed in after the LF agreed to be granted four ministries – including a services ministry, rather than a sovereign one as it had previously demanded – failed to gain the approval of President Michel Aoun, the FPM’s founder. A political source told The Daily Star at the time that Aoun's reservations centered mainly on Cabinet shares allocated to the LF and Progressive Socialist Party. “We negotiated with good intentions, and when we fell on a rock, we withdraw our previous offer,” the Geagea said. With the Cabinet deadlock in its fourth month, Geagea said he would not agree to further cuts at the LF’s expense. “There is no government without the Lebanese Forces.” Geagea said he had met with Aoun and was requested to meet with FPM leader and caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, who Geagea claimed “did not want to meet.” “[Bassil] is opposing everyone and not everyone is against him,” he said. Controversy erupts over street name in Ghobeiri BEIRUT: Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri Tuesday blasted a municipality that chose to name a street after former Hezbollah military commander Mustafa Badreddine, even as the municipality stood its ground over the decision to do so. “It is the mother of all strifes,” Hariri told reporters on the sidelines of a Future bloc meeting at his Downtown residence. “It is an unfortunate thing. When we took the course of justice, we stressed stability. There are some people who want to take the country to somewhere else, and they should take responsibility before God and the Lebanese people.” Hariri’s comments refer to the fact that Badreddine was one of the main suspects in the 2005 assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Badreddine was indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for the role he played in the crime, but in 2016 was confirmed to have been killed in Syria, where he was a military commander for Hezbollah, after which the charges against him were dropped. The STL is currently trying the other four indicted Hezbollah-affiliated suspects in absentia for the assassination. Photos of the newly erected sign drew angry comments from social media users who criticized the timing of the decision’s implementation – concurrent with the final STL hearing sessions being held near The Hague – as well as its proximity to Rafik Hariri University Hospital. The issue “won’t cause strife, because there are wise people in this country,” Hariri said. Caretaker Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said Monday he hadn’t approved the municipality’s decision. But in a statement issued late Monday evening, the Ghobeiri Municipality maintained that its decision to name the street after Badreddine was “legal, sound and lawful.” The municipality said the decision, which was issued by the municipal council on June 14, 2017, had been registered at the ministry in August of the same year and failed to get a response either approving or rejecting it. It said that it had sent a memo to the Interior Ministry on June 13, 2018, informing it that the decision to name the street was considered to be “OK’d” after having been registered at the ministry for over a year. It cited Article 63 of the Municipalities Law, which states that “the decision becomes implicitly approved if the executive authority didn’t take a decision a month after the date of being registered.” Machnouk’s office said in a statement that the minister had refused to sign the decision allowing a street in Ghobeiri to be named after the now-deceased Badreddine, and that a refusal to sign did not constitute approval. The decision to name the street after Badreddine “threatens public order,” the statement said.