Beirut – Omar Habanjar
The meeting of Presidents Michel Aoun and Najib Mikati in Baabda did not achieve the required breach, at least three days following it took place. Issam Sharaf El-Din and Economy Minister Amin Salam. As for the third minister whose name was withdrawn from the replacement box, he is Energy Minister Walid Fayyad, following Mikati was informed that the Ministry of Energy would remain in the hands of the ministers of the heir to the throne, Gibran Bassil, or it would not be a government.
After the memorable meeting in Baabda, President Mikati said: The views are similar and the discussion is related. The question that arises ten days before the start of the constitutional deadline for the presidential elections, is there still a connection to discussing the government file, or has it been postponed indefinitely?
The positives that accompanied the meeting evaporated, following it became clear to the presidential team that Mikati was not regarding to form a government that would make the period following the end of the presidential term an extension of what came before it. Mikati refused to commit to making appointments to the main important positions in favor of the free movement, and the prior pledge from the Prime Minister to end the tasks of senior officials, starting with the Governor of the Banque du Liban Riad Salameh, the discriminatory Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Middle East Airlines, which is owned mostly by the Banque du Liban, Muhammad al-Hout. And the Director General of the Public Procurement Corporation, Jean Al-Aliyah, and the appointment of the Electricity Regulatory Authority from among those affiliated with the Covenant, with the majority of them, and by making formations in the diplomatic corps.
In addition, the presidential team’s desire for the Constitutional Council looking into parliamentary appeals to issue its decision before the date of the presidential elections, which have not yet been officially determined, in the hope of canceling some representations in favor of the opposition party, including the Free Movement, in contrast to the desire of the other parties to issue a decision following these elections.
It seems that the head of the Free Movement, Gibran Bassil, realized Mikati’s rejection of all such conditions, so he opened fire on him, on the eve and following the Baabda meeting, without providing the head of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, as he said in a tweet to him: “Last time, we incurred a presidential vacuum for two years. And half a year, to prove that the president of the country is the actual representative of the people, and we succeeded in this matter.” Despite the resurrection being upon us, how can we create a vacuum, we called it political opposition to establish rights, we called it obstruction. This time the country does not have a vacuum, and we are not ready to be the cause of it. Others say that he will use his right of obstruction, in order to prevent the arrival of those who do not enjoy his support.
Bassil added: Glory be to God, what have we done, being the opposite of us… Our crime is that we went to Patriarch Bechara al-Ra’i, because through his position, he can work on this consensus, and if they go crazy.
Bassil said: We woke up the demons of October 13, 1990 in them, at that time, to get rid of General Aoun, and they gave up the powers of the President of the Republic.
Radio Free Lebanon quoted government circles as saying that Bassil is trying to suggest that President Mikati has returned to the rule of sluggishness and slowness in forming a government, while he, that is Bassil, has the greatest interest in not forming a new government, because he needs a peg to cover his plan and intentions regarding the presidential election. .
Follow-up sources indicated that Basil’s invocation of the demons of the year 1990 in the context of suggesting that Aoun’s rebellion at that time aimed at refusing to hand over the Baabda Palace in order to adhere to rights and to fortify the presidency of the Republic. “.president
The Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, MP Muhammad Raad, stressed the necessity of electing a new president of the republic, according to the constitutional foundations and on the specified date. Performance and the sectarian mind that is not suitable for the establishment of a state or the administration of a state.
In addition, the sources spoke of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s writing to Finance Minister Youssef Khalil, who is affiliated with Berri, asking him to raise the customs dollar to 20,000 Lebanese pounds in consultation with the governor of the Central Bank, instead of having to bear with the government. Responsibility for such a decision, which the minister refused to abide by, in turn, Hezbollah representatives Hassan Fadlallah and Ali Fayyad considered the formula in circulation for the customs dollar unacceptable, and there is a fear of high prices and chaos.
As for the issue of returning the displaced Syrians, it sparked an open dispute between the Prime Minister, who considers this file to be the affair of the Minister of Social Affairs, Hector Hajjar, and the presidential team that assigned the Minister of the Displaced, Issam Sharaf El-Din, the task of addressing this issue in Syria, while the Serail sources believe that Gibran Bassil is behind This assignment.
For his part, Minister Sharaf El-Din said: “I have an official mandate in the file of the displaced Syrians, and I have documents confirming what I say. I tried to meet Prime Minister Najib Mikati, but he did not respond. If he wants to withdraw the file from me, I want to hear it from him and to bear responsibility towards history and the Lebanese people.”
Sharaf El-Din added to “Voice of Lebanon”: “Mikati does not want to be in the forefront of this file and is trying to create a dispute between me and Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar.”
He continued, “The Prime Minister takes a position on me because I demanded last April that the money that was taken out by its owners from Lebanon before the October Revolution, being one of them, be returned abroad, where he transferred 500 million dollars abroad.”
The media advisor to the Prime Minister, Faris Al-Jamil, responded to him, challenging him to provide evidence to prove his words.
