by NAJIA HOUSSARI — arabnews — BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said on Saturday that he will not form a Cabinet that simply caters to President Michel Aoun’s wishes. “I will not form a government as the team of the president wants it, or any other political faction,” Hariri told a parliamentary session. The prime minister-designate added that he “will only form the kind of government needed to stop collapse and prevent the big crash that is threatening the Lebanese.” Hariri’s remarks came in response to the president’s letter to parliament calling on MPs search for an alternative to the prime minister-designate. Parliament’s plenary session was broadcast live and lasted for about two hours. Lebanon has been without a government for seven months after Hassan Diab’s resignation as prime minister in the wake of the Beirut port blast which killed more than 200 people last August.
Hariri told parliament that “the truth of what is happening is that the president of the republic tells the deputies in his message: ‘You named a prime minister, I do not want him, and I will not allow him to form a government. Please, get rid of him.’ This is an attempt to absolve the president of the republic from the accusation of obstructing the formation of the government.” The prime minister-designate also said that Aoun sent messages to foreign capitals similar to his letter to parliament “to protect some of those around him and the political team from European sanctions.” He accused Aoun of “wanting us to amend the constitution. If we don’t, he wants to change the constitution in practice without amendment.”
Hariri claimed that “the president wants to get rid” of him. “If Aoun had released the government formation that I presented to him six months ago, wouldn’t we have made a lot of progress in criminal scrutiny at the Banque du Liban and started it in all the ministries and institutions of the state?” he asked. “Wouldn’t we have achieved the agreement with the International Monetary Fund and launched the reform workshop? “Wouldn’t we have started rebuilding what was destroyed by the horrific Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut? “Wouldn’t the national currency have settled on a unified and reasonable exchange rate against the dollar? But what can be done, while we have an administration that insists on establishing itself as a hero in wasting opportunities.” Hariri described the statement that “a Muslim prime minister has no right to name Christian ministers” as “trivial talk.”
by naharnet — Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil on Saturday stressed that all Lebanese sects have the right to be properly represented in the new government, as he called for a constitutional amendment that sets a deadline for PMs-designate to form a new government. Bassil added, in a speech before parliament, that President Michel Aoun and the FPM are urging PM-designate Saad Hariri to form a new government and are not seeking to withdraw his designation. Bassil was speaking during a parliamentary session dedicated to debating a letter sent by Aoun to parliament which blames Hariri for the ongoing delay in forming a new government. “The issue is not sectarian… but rather constitutional.
The crisis might be a crisis of system and constitution, and this matter cannot be resolved by Hariri alone nor the president alone nor by any single bloc. The crisis needs parliament as a whole, following a letter from the president, and it can do something,” Bassil added. Underscoring that “no one can eliminate a sect” from the cabinet formation process, the FPM chief emphasized that no one sect can also “monopolize” that process. “As long as the president has a signature to put on the formation decree, this means that any detail in the formation process must be subject to his approval and he does not merely document the cabinet formation process or issue its decree,” Bassil went on to say
He added that ministerial portfolios must be “distributed to sects equally and to parliamentary blocs fairly.” “This is a known tradition and it is not the right time to tamper with it,” Bassil said. He also urged Hariri to submit a “detailed” line-up. Moreover, Bassil said a constitutional amendment setting deadlines for cabinet formation is needed, calling on Aoun to schedule a national dialogue session that would tackle the new government, reforms and the “change of the current system.”
