ANSD : Lebanon: Cabinet formation totally deadlocked, new talks fail

MON 25 - 11 - 2024

Date: Sep 17, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Lebanon: Cabinet formation totally deadlocked, new talks fail

_{Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star}
BEIRUT: The government formation process is totally deadlocked as a new round of consultations has so far failed to narrow differences over Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri’s stalled draft Cabinet formula, political sources said Sunday.

“The Cabinet formation crisis is at a complete standstill in the absence of serious attempts to break the deadlock,” a political source familiar with the government formation process told The Daily Star.

The source said Hariri had met with MP Ibrahim Kanaan from the Free Patriotic Movement, discussing the reservations of President Michel Aoun over the prime minister-designate’s Cabinet lineup.

“No positive results emerged from the meeting as Hariri refused to make substantial amendments to the Cabinet formula as demanded by Aoun,” the source said. He added that Hariri was ready to introduce “minor modifications” to the formula that apparently fell short of Aoun’s reservations.

Kanaan and MP Elias Bou Saab, also from the FPM, as well as caretaker Culture Minister Ghattas Khoury, a political adviser to Hariri, are involved in the new flurry of political activity aimed at overcoming Aoun’s reservations over the Cabinet formula.

In his remarks over the Cabinet formula, Aoun stressed that no single party should monopolize representation and that representation of the parties should respect the results of the May 6 parliamentary elections, a source at Baabda Palace had told The Daily Star.

The source said if the ongoing consultations on the Cabinet crisis produced positive results, this would pave the way for a new meeting between Aoun and Hariri to explore an amended formula before the president travels to New York on Sept. 23 to attend the 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Hariri presented Aoun on Sept. 3 with his first draft Cabinet formula since May 24, when he was appointed to form a government, but it failed to break the deadlock.

Aoun voiced a number of reservations over the formula, particularly over the allocation of ministerial posts to the Lebanese Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party. The formula has not only failed to gain the support of Aoun and the FPM, but it 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.Further complicating the Cabinet formation process is the escalating rhetoric between the FPM and the PSP in the past few days, reflecting differences over government shares. MP Wael Abu Faour from the PSP’s parliamentary bloc launched a scathing tirade against Aoun, accusing him of seeking to undermine the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the 1975-90 Civil War and regulated equal power sharing between Christians and Muslims.

Two FPM officials defended Aoun’s reservations over the formula. “What forms the government is an agreement between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri. Hariri must start from the remarks made by President Aoun on the government formation,” MP Alain Aoun from the FPM’s parliamentary Strong Lebanon bloc told a local TV station.

Caretaker Justice Minister Salim Jreissati urged Hariri to form “a homogenous government based on one criterion.”

“We don’t want to exclude anyone, nor do we want to rule out the election results in the government,” Jreissati said. “We know that the economic situation is critical, but [economic] pressure will not work with the president to form just any Cabinet. We don’t want the formation of just any Cabinet.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai urged Aoun and Hariri to accelerate the Cabinet formation and renewed his call for an “emergency neutral government to begin building national unity.”

Rai, who has criticized political rivals for their failure to agree on the formation of a new government, said during a tour of the Iqlim al-Kharroub district, south of Beirut, “national unity founded on coexistence, I wish it will infect political and party leaders and parliamentary blocs because our people are living this national unity, but unfortunately political leaders are not.”

In another speech in the town of Baasir in the Chouf disctrict, Rai said: “From Baasir, we appeal to the president and the prime minister [-designate] to speed up the formation of the government. We tell them it is not permissible to go on for long without the formation of the government. There is no excuse for not forming it. Neither [Cabinet] shares, nor sizes are priority. The priority is Lebanon and the people. You have no right not to build a government or a nation.”

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said Lebanon could still form a new government despite what, he called, “Arab and foreign interference” in the formation process.

“If we showed determination [to form] a balanced government based on proportionality, we will be able to make foreign and Arab powers that are interfering in Lebanon lose hope,” Qassem told an Ashoura gathering held by Hezbollah in the southern city of Tyre Saturday night.

“They [Arab and foreign powers] are exerting pressure so that the [new] government will be in such a shape that they can exploit it. But if we stood fast and formed a government that fulfills the people’s aspirations, they will eventually accept,” he said. “Today, we can form a government without these external pressures, especially since the parliamentary elections resulted in an important proportional outcome. Let’s apply this proportionality in the government formation.”

Caretaker Youth and Sports Minister Mohammad Fneish, one of two Hezbollah ministers in Hariri’s outgoing Cabinet, said the failure to form a new government is no longer acceptable “because there is damage for the country at the economic and social levels.”

“Some might exploit this damage to undermine the country’s stable security,” Fneish told a Hezbollah-held Ashoura gathering in the southern town of Bint Jbeil Saturday. He said the adoption of a unified criterion in the government formation would overcome the remaining obstacles to the formation.

“Although we support a national partnership government that will not exclude anyone, we at the same time call for the adoption of a unified criterion that will be applied to all parliamentary blocs based on the results of parliamentary elections,” Fneish said. “This is sufficient to eliminate barriers to the government formation, which must also include an understanding between the prime minister-designate and the president.”

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