A new meeting, the fourth, will be held in Baabda today between Presidents Michel Aoun, Najib and Mikati, while hints from the Free Movement surfaced on the political surface that President Aoun made his choice to leave Baabda Palace, on the night of October 31, to his home, but the same sources came back to talk about options An alternative is open to him, according to the Kuwaiti “news”, most notably the threat to withdraw the presidential mandate given to Mikati to form the government, in the event “the other party decides to violate the constitution… by granting the caretaker government the capacity to perform the tasks of the President of the Republic!”
As part of this jurisprudence, he withdrew the assignment that Mikati had obtained and called the parliament for new consultations in which another prime minister would be chosen who could form it quickly, and be qualified to run the country in the event of a presidential vacancy.
Of course, such a withdrawal of the mandate revealed by Al-Akhbar newspaper has no place in the constitution, nor in custom. Najib Mikati’s mandate to form a government comes from the Parliament, and no one has the authority to break a mandate issued by a parliamentary majority, no matter how modest it seems. The assignment falls, with a self-apologetic initiative on the part of the personally-designated president, unless it is possible to repeat the experience of 1989, when the transitional prime minister, Michel Aoun, transformed the Republican Palace into the People’s Palace to escape any constitutional restrictions.
According to Baabda sources, the way out of that tunnel will be Mikati’s return to open a realistic discussion with President Aoun to form a new government before September 1.
The answer came from Mikati personally through an interview with Al-Jadeed channel, where he confirmed what was reported by Al-Anbaa about a presidential desire to expand the government to 30 ministers by including six ministers of state with a political background to enable the head of the Free Movement, Gibran Bassil, to obtain the blocking third in Cabinet, presidential vacancy.
He continued, “During the meeting with the President of the Republic, the names to be changed were presented, including the two ministers, Walid Fayyad and Amin Salam, and he promised at the time that he would give his response after 24 hours, but he asked, “Who will name the ministers subject to the amendment?” Mikati indicated that he was surprised, on the next day of the meeting with the President of the Republic, by the dispatch of the Director-General of the Presidency, Antoine Choucair, carrying a message that said, “It is not okay.”
It is clear that President Aoun is committed to expanding the government, which was approved by President Mikati, and to include six additional ministers, 3 Muslims and 3 Christians. It was reported that Major General Abbas Ibrahim will be among the three Muslim ministers, on the Shiite side as Minister of National Security Affairs.
The problem here lies in the insistence of the head of the Free Movement, Gibran Bassil, that the Ministry of the Interior be part of his share, along with the Ministry of Energy. Without sticking to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as he wants to keep the blocking third of his current in the expanded government, while Mikati still refuses to give up the Ministry of the Interior, and refuses to enable him from the blocking third, so far, with the hope of the political circles to continue to adhere to this position, during the expected fourth meeting with President Aoun this morning.
It was noted that Baabda sources dealt with the topic of today’s meeting, through the equation of authorship or waiting and without referring to the alternatives, including withdrawing the mandate to form the government.
Those working on the formation line are betting on the Baabda meeting today and are mortgaging the fate of the government’s labor in its atmosphere according to “The Nation’s Call.” If the meeting manages to “seal the hernia” presidential and sew a consensual formula for the composition of the ministerial quotas in the expected formation between Presidents Michel Aoun and Najib Mikati, then the weightings tend towards optimism. That the authorship file would witness a quick breakthrough that would lead to the birth of a new government within a week, but if today’s meeting leads to more stagnation and “scoring of points,” it may amount to an official announcement of the impossibility of forming a new government before the end of the term, and the passage to the presidential vacancy bank. On board the caretaker government.
It seemed remarkable, according to Al-Nahar, that the frequency of the repercussions of the demand and social crises escalated in a way that is difficult to separate from the complications that faced the last attempt to form a new government, which reflects that these crises have reached extremely negative levels that threaten the entire country with successive social explosions, one of the most prominent examples of which is a “judicial uprising” represented by a broad, inconsistent strike. His support is preceded without reservation by the Supreme Judicial Council in a rare phenomenon. There are also fears strongly escalating from the developments of the fuel market, after the signs of the trend to completely lift subsidies for gasoline, especially in what threatens to ignite the prices of oil derivatives as well as the prices of consumer goods in general, and puts the entire country in front of a very difficult and dangerous reality in conjunction with the stage of the presidential elections. It seems clear that the simultaneous intertwining between the constitutional entitlements and the border demarcation file, and the caution and fear it bears about any escalating developments and the repercussions of life, financial and social crises, is due to the evasion of the lost government reality between obstructing the formation of a new government and unleashing the war of jurisprudence and possibilities related to the reality of the caretaker government regarding the management of the presidential elections Especially in the event of a presidential vacuum. Data and impressions prevailed in the last hours that attempts to float the current government with its vaccination by naming ministers of state, as was demanded by President Michel Aoun, may be raised again, and that a new meeting is likely to take place today between Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati, and his deliberations are supposed to reveal the likely direction of government entitlement, and what If the parameters of a settlement are still present between the two men, after all the hostile repercussions of the fierce media and polemic war that took place between Mikati and the head of the “Free Patriotic Movement” MP Gibran Bassil. There was information about a settlement formula that is being worked on, and that Progressive Socialist Party Chairman Walid Jumblatt refused a request from President Mikati to name a replacement for the current Minister of the Displaced, Essam Sharaf El-Din, because he did not want to interfere in the formation of the government.