09 May 2013

Life returned to the Grand Serail Wednesday with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati holding a series of meetings there, in a development signaling his government, which resigned in March, would serve in a caretaker capacity for quite a long time.

Mikati met with EU Ambassador to Lebanon Angelina Eichhorst and chaired a ministerial and security meeting to discuss the situation in his home city of Tripoli.

He also met with the Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Awad Assiri, to discuss bilateral relations between the two countries. Assiri emerged from the meeting, saying: “No comment.”

Three days after Mikati resigned on March 22, the Grand Serail appeared to be in the process of preparations for receiving a new prime minister, along with his work team. Boxes filled with files were seen being removed from the Grand Serail offices and dispatched in the direction of Mikati’s offices in the Verdun neighborhood. Mikati’s media spokesman Faris Gemayel had even packed the flowers that decorated the outgoing premier’s office and dismissed all but one female member of the media office.

The rest of Mikati’s team, approximately 15 members, did the same thing, with some of them not even showing up at the Grand Serail.

A large part of the work of Mikati’s team tailed off because the mission of a caretaker Cabinet and its head is confined to routine work, which the staff at the premiership’s Secretariat-General headed by Suhail Bouji can do. Some 100 staff, including advisers, welcome and bid farewell to an outgoing prime minister along with his team. Some of this staff, such as Saeed Mirza and Hisham Shaar, have reached retirement age.

Following the government’s resignation, Mikati’s team was put in a situation indicating that the formation of a new Cabinet was very close, or at least that was the prevailing belief in these circles. However, the likelihood of a fairly prompt Cabinet formation process dimmed, leading to the idea it would be better to return the boxes of files that had been sent to Mikati’s private offices, because the caretaker capacity would last for considerably longer than originally expected.

Members of Mikati’s team prefer to avoid talking about the formation of a new Cabinet. Instead, they listen to their daily stream of visitors, who inform them that their presence in the Grand Serail will be prolonged. Visitors have noticed a major change in the premiership’s restored level of activity.

The pace will pick up even more next week when the Grand Serail is expected to receive senior foreign envoys from the White House and the European Union.

They will want to be briefed by Mikati on the political situation in Lebanon, particularly in light of the crisis over a new electoral law and the formation of a new Cabinet, as well as on the situation in Syria and its repercussions on Lebanon.

This follows Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s recent speech in which he confirmed his party’s participation in the fighting in Syria and said Syria’s friends would not allow Damascus to fall into the hands of takfiri groups.

Copyright The Daily Star 2013.