BEIRUT: The possible formation of a neutral Cabinet is gaining ground as Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam’s attempts to set up a government of rival politicians appear to have foundered on conditions and counter-conditions set by the rival factions, political sources said Monday.
Also, Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt, who has long insisted on a national unity government representing the country’s major political parties, including Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, signaled his readiness for other options, including a neutral government, in order to break the four-month-long Cabinet stalemate.
“If understanding with the political parties on a Cabinet of national interest remains at a dead-end, matters are heading toward the formation of a neutral, nonpartisan government to serve the people’s interests away from tension and divisions,” a source close to Salam told The Daily Star.
“Prime Minister-designate Salam is still trying to form a Cabinet of national interest, but the situation can no longer endure any further delay,” he said.
According to the source, Salam, who was appointed April 6 to form a new Cabinet, will begin a new round of consultations with the March 8 and March 14 parties after the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which begins Thursday.
“Salam will take the decision he deems fit to serve the interest of the Lebanese people who can no longer stand any delay in the vacuum in the executive authority and in dealing with their socio-economic problems,” the source said.
Hezbollah rebuffed any proposal for a neutral Cabinet. “There is nothing neutral in Lebanon. No one is neutral in Lebanon,” Mohammad Fneish, Hezbollah’s caretaker minister of state for administrative reform, told The Daily Star.
“We insist on a political and a national unity Cabinet in which all parties are represented in proportion to the size of their representation in Parliament,” he said.
Salam met President Michel Sleiman Monday to brief him on the outcome of his consultations to form a new Cabinet.
Sleiman and Salam underlined the importance of combining efforts and the need for the rival factions to make sacrifices and concessions to form a Cabinet that can win the largest popular and political support, according to a statement released by the president’s office.
In a speech on Army Day, Sleiman voiced support for the formation of a neutral government – a long-standing demand of the March 14 coalition – if a Cabinet of national interest could not be formed.
The next day, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri made a similar proposal when he called for the formation of a government excluding his Future Movement and Hezbollah as a means to break the Cabinet deadlock.
In a televised speech from his residence in the Saudi city of Jeddah addressing several Ramadan iftars organized by the Future Movement in Beirut, the north and south, Hariri also said the Future Movement was ready to attend National Dialogue to discuss the thorny issue of Hezbollah’s arms.
Jumblatt praised Hariri’s willingness to engage in National Dialogue, but warned of the consequences of the continued Cabinet deadlock ahead of the presidential elections scheduled in May next year. He said his parliamentary National Struggle Front was mulling other options to help resolve the Cabinet crisis.
“Given the Cabinet stalemate months after [Salam’s] designation and as the continuing efforts to form a government of national unity or national interest that have led nowhere, the National Struggle Front sees that this complicated situation cannot continue indefinitely, especially as vacuum is spreading to more than one position ahead of the presidential elections,” Jumblatt said in his weekly stance published in the PSP’s online Al-Anbaa newspaper.
Highlighting the worsening economic and living conditions, the decline in public services, including electricity, as well as the touristic, agricultural and industrial sectors, and the problems of unemployment, public debts and treasury deficit, in addition to the crisis of thousands of Syrian refugees, the PSP chief added: “The Front may ponder possible options to emerge from this dead-end toward new steps away from the theories of conspiracy about which some writers are writing.”
A senior PSP source said a neutral Cabinet is one of the options which Jumblatt is considering. “A neutral government is one of the options to break the current deadlock after the three-eight Cabinet proposal and a national unity government have been rejected,” the source told The Daily Star.
Hezbollah and its March 8 allies have rejected Salam’s proposal for a 24-member Cabinet equally divided between the March 8 and March 14 camps and centrists. They have instead called for a national unity government in which each party is represented in proportion to the size of its parliamentary representation. Salam has rejected this along with the March 8 demand for veto power.
The March 14 coalition, which has demanded a neutral, nonpartisan government, has rejected Hezbollah’s participation in the Cabinet before it withdraws its fighters from Syria.
The Kataeb Party called in a statement after its weekly meeting for the formation of “a strong government” which, it said, was the key to tackling accumulated political, economic and security problems.
by: Hussein Dakroub
