Naharnet

Report: Government Formation Deadlock Persists

None of the external proposals to help put together a Lebanese government has yielded concrete and practical results. Not even the reports on possible European sanctions against parties obstructing the government formation, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The only practical suggestion to resolve the government impasse is Speaker Nabih Berri’s proposal to form a 24-minister line-up based on the 8+8+8 formula without granting veto powers to any political party, said the daily.

But, the impasse preventing Berri’s proposal from reaching its end is the differences between parties on naming two Christian ministers out of 12 in the Cabinet.

Naming the Christian ministers is distributed as follows: 7 ministers of President Michel Aoun’s share (including an Armenian minister), 2 ministers of Marada Movement, 1 minister of the National Party, and the two Christian ministers that both, Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri, refuse the other to name.

Baabda sources say: "The major problem hindering this initiative is who names these two Christian ministers, as whoever names them gets a one-third-plus-one ministerial share.”

Aoun and Hariri are also still in conflict over naming the ministers for the interior and justice portfolios, said the daily.

Baabda sources referred to the latest flurry of diplomatic mobility towards Lebanon. The

recent Western and Arab foreign communications and visits “did not reap a result,” they said, and the amount of advice therein was much more than realistic practical proposals.

The government file is standing idle and sources at Baabda Palace criticized Hariri saying since his designation six months ago, he “does not want to form a government, and has no plan of undertaking any positive development."

The initial task of a new government is to launch a path to stop the economic and financial collapse in Lebanon, and to reconstruct the parts that were destroyed by the port explosion on the fourth of August.

Source: Naharnet


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