Hussein Dakroub – The Daily Star
The Cabinet formation process entered its seventh month of deadlock Saturday with no solution in sight, as the parties concerned stuck to their guns over the issue of representing six Hezbollah-backed Sunni MPs in the new government.
Lebanese leaders appeared to be racing against time to have a new government formed ahead of an Arab economic summit slated to be held in Lebanon in January.
Caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil had visited most Arab countries to deliver invitations from President Michel Aoun for the two-day 2019 Arab Economic and Social Development Summit set to be held in Beirut Jan. 19-20.
The AESD was formed as an economic and developmental conference that tends to involve the private sector, including agriculture, banks, chambers of commerce and industry.
Despite the gloomy prospects surrounding the Cabinet formation, Bassil sounded hopeful about breaking the impasse ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Asked when the new government would be formed, Bassil, speaking to reporters at Baabda Palace Thursday after attending the annual Independence Day reception led by Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, said: “Inshallah, before the holidays.”
But Bassil’s upbeat note contrasted with the outcome of a private meeting that brought together Aoun, Berri and Hariri before the reception.
The three leaders were reported to have discussed a possible solution to the representation problem of the six Sunni MPs, the last remaining hurdle to the Cabinet formation.
“There is nothing new at all [on the Cabinet crisis],” Berri said after the meeting.
Hariri reiterated his position on the issue of the six Sunni MPs not affiliated with his Future Movement, who are demanding to be represented in the next government.Asked whether he would meet with the six MPs who have sought a meeting with him to discuss their demand, Hariri said: “The solution is not with me … The independent Sunni MPs, what are they independent of?”
Hariri has maintained that the solution to this problem is not with him but with the others, referring to Hezbollah.
But senior Hezbollah officials and the six Sunni MPs have insisted that impasse could be resolved by the prime minister-designate if he agreed to name one of the six as a minister in his next government.
MP Abdel-Rahim Mrad, one of the six MPs, confirmed they had already requested a meeting with Hariri to discuss their demand for representation.
“We requested yesterday [Thursday] a date for a meeting with the prime minister-designate, but so far we have got no answer. We are still waiting for a date to be set for the meeting,” Mrad told The Daily Star.
He refused to say what the six MPs would do if Hariri refused to meet them. “We will then act accordingly,” he added.
Mrad renewed the six MPs’ demand that one of them be represented in the new government with any portfolio that might be chosen by Hariri. “We will not accept anyone from outside the “Consultative Gathering” [six MPs] to represent us,” he said.
Asked whether Bassil’s mediation attempt to resolve the six MPs’ representation problem had collapsed, Mrad said: “We cannot say anything before we meet with Prime Minister Hariri.”
Future MP Sami Fatfat said Hariri was ready to meet the six MPs as individuals, but not as a bloc because some of them already belonged to other parliamentary blocs. “The prime minister-designate is not ready to receive them [six MPs] as a bloc. The doors of [Hariri’s] Downtown residence are open for them as individuals. It is not possible [for Hariri] to receive them as a Consultative Gathering [bloc], because this would amount to recognizing them,” Fatfat told the Central News Agency.
He said the six MPs were not brought together in a bloc during the May parliamentary elections, or during the Cabinet formation consultations, but weeks after Hariri started the formation negotiations.
“The ball is in the court of Hezbollah, which encouraged the six MPs to insist on their demand and poured fuel on the formation fire. Therefore, it is Hezbollah’s responsibility, and no other party, to put out this fire,” Fatfat said.
Another Future MP said Hezbollah’s refusal to give the names of its three ministers to Hariri was to blame for the Cabinet formation delay. Hezbollah has linked its participation in Cabinet to the six MPs’ representation.
“The Cabinet lineup was ready [late last month] and everyone was waiting for the Cabinet decrees to be announced from Baabda Palace had it not been for the emergence of the hidden Sunni knot that Hezbollah put on the table,” Future MP Mohammad Hajjar told the Voice of Lebanon radio station. “This group [Hezbollah] wants the final signature on the Cabinet lineup to be theirs.”
But a senior Hezbollah official reaffirmed that the solution to the problem lay with Hariri accepting to cede a seat to the six MPs in the government.
“By insisting on denying the rights of the independent Sunni MPs, the prime minister-designate is inflicting damage on everyone, on [Aoun’s] term, the next Cabinet, the Lebanese economy and the political climate that has been thrown into further tension and divisions,” Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, a member of Hezbollah’s Central Council, told a memorial ceremony in south Lebanon. “The solution, firstly and lastly, lies with the prime minister-designate.”