Mikati refuses to form a cabinet like Diab’s

Beirut-

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati stressed that he will not form a government that resembles the previous governments.

PM Hassan Diab’s failed cabinet , resigned about a year ago following the Beirut port explosion .

Diab’s government was the first ever to default on Lebanon’s public debt , a move that led to the collapse of the Lebanese currency .

The Lebanese pound was pegged against a dollar at the rate off about 1500 LL to the US dollar , it lost over 90 % of its value and is now trading at about 20, 500 LL to US dollar on the parallel market

“I know that the mission is very difficult and that my designation has become the only hope, and I have made this step in order to form a government and not something else, but I will not form a government that is similar to the previous ones,” Mikati told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

He added that the formation of such a government would lead to “disputes and conflicts inside cabinet over the draft laws and decisions that will be taken by the government.”

“I’m not asking for extraordinary jurisdiction, but at least I should be able to practice my powers as a prime minister for the sake of facilitating action,” Mikati went on to say.

Denying that he has canceled an appointment at the presidential palace, the PM-designate clarified that “there was no such appointment in the first place because the contacts that we made did not produce a meeting.”

“This issue was clear in my remarks after the last meeting,” he added.

Waste of time – no government in the near future.”

Earlier today MP Mario Aoun of the Free Patriotic Movement announced that “there will be no government in the near future.”

President Aoun is the founder of FPM but it is now run by his son-in-law MP Gebran Bassil

“The opposition camp is trying to waste time and it only wants this presidential tenure to come to an end, but what’s happening is a crime against Lebanon and its people,” Aoun said in an interview with Radio Voice of All Lebanon.

“PM-designate Najib Mikati is behaving in a manner similar to that of ex-PM Saad Hariri albeit in a diplomatic way. He is deliberately promoting a positive atmosphere in his statements as if things have been finalized, whereas there is no will to form a cabinet,” Aoun charged.

“There is a solution that is being finalized to resolve the dispute over the interior portfolio,” the sources added, noting that the issue of the justice portfolio “has nearly been settled.”