Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star
President Michel Aoun is capable of resolving the monthslong Cabinet formation crisis, caretaker Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said Monday, as attempts have so far failed to resolve the problem of representing six Hezbollah-backed Sunni MPs in the new government.
Machnouk’s remarks came as Speaker Nabih Berri underlined the urgency of forming a new government, but did not appear to be optimistic about a solution to the crisis soon.
“I repeat what the president had said that we no longer have the luxury at all of [a delay in the government formation]. The government should have been formed not today, but yesterday,” Berri said at a joint news conference at his Ain al-Tineh residence with visiting President of the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium Siegfried Bracke.
Asked if the Cabinet formation bid had reached a dead-end, Berri said: “We have nothing but to hope for the best. As I have said previously, we are left only with prayers [to facilitate the Cabinet formation].”
But Machnouk said Aoun held the key to a solution to the Cabinet formation process, which has entered its seventh month of deadlock.
“President Michel Aoun is one of Lebanon’s men who are capable of standing up following any crisis that hits Lebanon to rescue it from the crises it is experiencing, the most important of which is the Cabinet crisis, as well as the deep economic crisis on which Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Saad Hariri stress,” Machnouk said in a speech at a conference entitled, “Terrorism in the Region and its Impact on the African Continent”.A demand by the six Sunni MPs not affiliated with the Future Movement for representation had emerged as the last obstacle as Hariri was preparing to announce a 30-member Cabinet lineup late last month.
The Cabinet formation has been further complicated as the three main parties concerned with the final stumbling block Hariri, Hezbollah and the six MPs have refused to budge on their positions on the issue of representing the six MPs in the new government.
Hariri has so far refused to meet with the six MPs.
Hezbollah, which is strongly backing the six MPs’ representation demand, has refused to provide the names of its three ministers to Hariri, thus holding up the Cabinet formation.
Caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, who has been mediating in the issue, met Monday with MP Abdel-Rahim Mrad, one of the six MPs, who reiterated the MPs’ demand to be represented in the next government.
Bassil, the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement who has been assigned by Aoun to find a solution the six MPs’ representation problem, did not carry anything new, Mrad told The Daily Star Monday night.
“We are still waiting for a date to be set for a meeting with Prime Minister Hariri to discuss our demand for representation in the next government,” Mrad said.
“We insist on our demand to be represented with one of us in the government. There is no retreat from this demand,” he added.
Asked if his mediation attempts to resolve the six MPs’ representation problem have been suspended, Bassil said: “Of course they haven’t.”
But a Future lawmaker said a possible meeting between Hariri and the six MPs would lead nowhere.
“Nothing will come from a meeting between Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and the independent Sunni MPs, if it ever happens, because the designated premier will only reiterate his position,” Future MP Assem Araji told a local radio station.
He dismissed the possibility that a compromise was in the making, in which a candidate close to the six MPs would be named a minister instead of one being chosen from within the group.
“The government formation process is at a standstill,” Araji said, adding that a Cabinet would only see the daylight if Hezbollah presented the names of its ministers to Hariri.
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea called on Aoun and Hariri to go ahead and form a new Cabinet, even if Hezbollah refused to provide the names of its ministers.
Speaking in an interview with the Central News Agency, Geagea urged Aoun and Hariri, “who shoulder their constitutional responsibilities in the Cabinet formation, to take a final decision by telling Hezbollah to give the names of its ministers, and if it refused, they form a Cabinet with whoever is in attendance.”
Citing the “economic and social situation that can no longer be endured,” he also called on Aoun and Hariri to agree on holding “meetings of necessity” of the caretaker Cabinet.