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BEIRUT: A week after his appointment as Lebanons new premier, Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati appeared Sunday to be running into trouble mainly over key ministries in his attempt to quickly form a Cabinet of 24 nonpartisan specialists to enact reforms and rescue the crises-hit country from total economic collapse.
Mikati is set to meet President Michel Aoun Monday to follow up on their talks last Thursday on the premier-designates Cabinet proposals for the distribution of ministerial portfolios among sects. Mikati has said he received a positive response from Aoun to his Cabinet proposals.
Besides discussing the distribution of ministerial portfolios among sects, Aoun and Mikati are expected to begin consulting on names of potential ministers and the portfolios to be assigned to them.
Tomorrows [Mondays] meeting will finally decide the sectarian distribution of portfolios in the Cabinet, unless discussions required another meeting, a source close to Mikati told The Daily Star Sunday.
Mikati said the ongoing discussions with Aoun are focused on a 24-member Cabinet of nonpartisan specialists. Starting Monday, we will begin discussing the issue of names [of ministers] with the president, Mikati, already twice as prime minister, said in an interview with MTV Thursday night.
An official source said Aoun and Mikati reached an understanding during their meeting Thursday on the distribution of the majority of portfolios among sects, but they remained at odds over the four "sovereign ministries": Interior, Finance, Defense and Foreign Affairs.
The president proposed a rotation of the four sovereign ministries but this did not work. Most probably, the rotation proposal will not work because the Shiites will not agree to cede the Finance Ministry, the source familiar with the matter told The Daily Star.
According to the source, Aoun wanted the Interior Ministry to be part of his Cabinet share, citing the fact that this ministry has been held by the Sunni sect for years, while the Finance Ministry has been controlled by the Shiite sect in previous governments. The Defense and Foreign Affairs portfolios have been assigned to Christians.
Therefore, the official source said he did not expect the two leaders to begin adding the names of potential ministers before the dispute over the key ministries is settled.
Mondays will be Mikatis fourth meeting with Aoun since his designation with a parliamentary majority to form a new government on July 26, less than two weeks after Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri stepped down following the presidents rejection of his proposed Cabinet lineup of 24 nonpartisan specialists to implement a reform program contained in the French initiative designed to lift Lebanon out of its crippling economic and financial crunch, the worst since the 1975-90 Civil War.
Mondays meeting between Aoun and Mikati comes against the backdrop of the European Unions adoption of a legal framework for a sanctions regime targeting Lebanese individuals and entities after a year of crisis that has left Lebanon without a fully functioning government and facing financial collapse, hyperinflation as well as food and fuel shortages.
The EUs move was viewed as part of stepped-up pressure by France and its European partners on rival Lebanese leaders to agree on the swift formation of a stable government capable of carrying out reforms.
But the rift over the key ministries has cast a gloom over Mikatis efforts to form a government. As in previous Cabinet formation bids, Aouns rotation proposal is apparently targeting Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has staunchly insisted that the Finance Ministry be allotted to the Shiite sect, refusing to budge on this position.
But in return for agreeing to let the Shiite sect retain the Finance Ministry and for agreeing to a Sunni being named as justice minister, Aoun wants the Interior Ministry to be assigned to a Christian and be part of his share.
Mikati, backed by Hariri and former premiers Tammam Salam and Fouad Siniora, was reportedly insisting on assigning the Interior and Justice portfolios to the Sunni sect, while Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement, headed by MP Gebran Bassil, want them to be allocated to Christians loyal to their team.
With regard to the rotation of the sovereign ministries, Mikati was reported to have told Aoun that a rotation of these ministries could not be done while the Finance Ministry remained allotted to the Shiite sect.
According to an MTV report, Cabinet formation efforts have been stalled over the Interior Ministry. France has intervened in an attempt to overcome the problem over the Interior Ministry by proposing the name of a former interior minister to take this ministry, it said.
Despite the FPMs decision not to participate in the new government or grant it a confidence vote, Aoun was also reported to have insisted on naming all the Christian ministers in the proposed lineup.
A dispute over who controls the Interior and Justice ministries and the naming of Christian ministers are two major hurdles that were largely blamed for derailing Hariris attempts to form a Cabinet of nonpartisan specialists nearly nine months after his designation.
The Interior and Justice ministries will have key roles mainly in supervising next years parliamentary elections. The Justice Ministry will also have an important role in the governments promised fight against rampant corruption and the waste of public funds, largely blamed for the crippling economic and financial crisis.
Also, Mikati will have to grapple with the possibility of the FPM refusing to grant the new Cabinet a vote of confidence after its decision not to participate in the government.
In an interview with LBCI channel this week, Bassil admitted that there is a dispute between Aoun and Mikati over the Interior Ministry. Why doesnt the president have the right to name an interior minister or a finance minister? Bassil asked.
In a speech Saturday on the eve of Army Day, Aoun said the formation of a rescue government would lead to defusing the crippling economic crisis, described by the World Bank as one of the worlds worst since the 1850s, posing the gravest threat to Lebanons stability since the Civil War. He said all the Lebanese feel that the Army still constituted the definite guarantee for stability and national unity despite the suffering of the military from the worsening financial crisis.
We hope in the near future to see the crisis easing with the formation of a rescue government for which the Lebanese are looking forward as a lifeline in the face of closed doors to solutions, Aoun said.
Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai weighed in on the difficulties and horse-trading among rival factions facing the Cabinet formation efforts.
It seems that the [Cabinet] formation is still hitting a kind of immunities, immunities of the domination and influence of politicians and the immunities of parties, blocs, interests, sharing of spoils and external allegiance, Rai said in a sermon Sunday at the patriarchs summer residence in the northern town of Diman. The country cannot endure procrastination and maneuvering. It needs a rescue government. Dont be late. The people are standing on a front line between the birth of a government to save them or reviving a revolution to rescue them, he added.
In addition to implementing essential reforms deemed crucial to unlocking billions of dollars in promised international aid to the cash-strapped country, the new government would be tasked with restarting negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on a bailout package and supervising next year's parliamentary elections.
Lebanon has been without a fully functioning government for nearly a year after Prime Minister Hassan Diab submitted his Cabinets resignation on Aug. 10 in the aftermath of the massive explosion that pulverized Beirut Port, killed 210 people, wounded thousands and damaged entire neighborhoods in the capital.
France, which has emerged as the main power broker in Lebanon since the port blast, has said it would host an aid conference on Aug. 4 to "respond to the needs of the Lebanese, whose situation is deteriorating every day." The date of the conference coincides with the first anniversary of the port blast which is widely blamed on decades of negligence by the country's ruling class. Macron had in August 2020 hosted a first aid conference in the wake of the Aug. 4 port explosion, rallying some 250 million euros in pledges
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