Beirut – Al-Jadeed TV quoted Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati as saying today, Wednesday, that he will convene the government within days.
The report stated that Mikati was speaking after a meeting this morning with President Michel Aoun. The Lebanese government has not met since October 12 due to a dispute over the investigation into the Beirut port explosion.
In turn, the “National Media Agency” reported that Najib Mikati told Aoun that “the general budget for 2022 is ready and will be received within the next two days.”
The agency quoted Mikati as saying, after his meeting with President Aoun today in Baabda, that “as soon as the budget is received, the Council of Ministers will be called to convene.”
He stressed that “the meeting with President Aoun was fruitful, and it was agreed to open an extraordinary session of Parliament.”
And last week, Lebanese President Michel Aoun called for the cabinet to meet as soon as possible, more than two months after his ally, Hezbollah, disrupted government sessions, in what appeared to be an implicit criticism of the party’s position without naming it.
Aoun called for an urgent national dialogue in order to reach an understanding on three issues: administrative decentralization, defense strategy, and economic recovery.
The government paralysis comes at a time when Lebanon is witnessing an economic crisis that the World Bank has ranked among the worst in the world since 1850, during which the Lebanese pound has lost more than ninety percent of its value against the dollar, and about 80 percent of the population is below the poverty line.
Despite the government’s failure to take any concrete measures to get out of the crisis and the slow pace of discussions with the International Monetary Fund, the Lebanese leaders expressed their optimism about the possibility of getting out of the crisis.
Lebanon is awaiting an important milestone represented by holding parliamentary elections on May 15, while a number of politicians, led by the head of the Lebanese Forces Party, Samir Geagea, expressed their fears that Hezbollah and its ally, the Free Patriotic Movement, would seek to postpone them.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati is seeking to find a way out of the multiple crises the country is going through, but he is facing Hezbollah’s policies and attempts to drag the country into regional conflicts and slipping into the Iranian axis in the face of the Gulf states.
Mikati became in an embarrassing position after Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah launched sharp criticism of Saudi Arabia this week at a time when the government is seeking to improve relations with the kingdom and the rest of the Gulf countries that withdrew their ambassadors as a result of the positions of former Information Minister George Qardahi on the war in Yemen.
Riyadh accuses Hezbollah of supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen and of imposing its hegemony on the Lebanese political system.
Observers believe that the government’s work in Lebanon has become a hostage to Hezbollah and Iran’s projects in the region, and that Mikati has no trick to save the country and confront Hezbollah’s hegemony over the official decision.