Lebanon’s caretaker government will hold its first session in more than six months next week but the agenda, seen by Reuters, omits any mention of possible steps towards fulfilling reforms required for an IMF deal to ease the country’s financial crisis.
Lebanon, long hobbled by factional feuding and endemic corruption and mismanagement, is in the fourth year of an economic meltdown that has gone largely unaddressed, leaving four in five people poor according to the United Nations.
BEIRUT, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Lebanon’s caretaker government will hold its first session in more than six months next week but the agenda, seen by Reuters, omits any mention of possible steps towards fulfilling reforms required for an IMF deal to ease the country’s financial crisis.
Lebanon, long hobbled by factional feuding and endemic corruption and mismanagement, is in the fourth year of an economic meltdown that has gone largely unaddressed, leaving four in five people poor according to the United Nations.Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport an ad
The agenda of the Dec. 5 cabinet session contains a number of pressing health, educational and other matters, but nothing to do with decisions related to financial restructuring required for a $3 billion International Monetary Fund deal.
The government went into caretaker mode after May elections but, more than six months later, politicians have failed to agree on the shape of a new cabinet despite tasking billionaire tycoon Najib Mikati to form one in June.
Given its caretaker status, the cabinet lacks full constitutional decision-making powers.
In a further complication, there has been no president since the end of October, when Michel Aoun’s six-year term expired.
The signature of a head of state is required to install any new government, but fractious political parties divided along sectarian lines have found no consensus on any candidate – a process that often takes many months and sometimes years
Mikati defends action, blasts FPM
Mikati on Saturday defended his call for a cabinet session on Monday despite objections by the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM)
“We will only approve the matters that we and the ministers believe are necessary,” Mikati said after his inauguration of the Beirut International and Arab Book Fair 2022.
He added that the session’s main objective is approving a decree related to dialysis and cancer patients.
Dismissing accusations suggesting that his cabinet is “dismembered,” Mikati stressed that the government is “complete” and “what it is doing is acting in caretaker capacity with the aim of serving the citizen.”
“Whoever has an alternative should come forward,” he added.
“I’m carrying out my full duty by calling for the session, and based on my relation with the ministers throughout the past period, they enjoy the same patriotic sense and mayve more, that’s why I believe that there will be broad participation,” Mikati went on to say.
Lamenting that some are depicting his call for the session as being “sectarian” or “targeted against a certain group,” Mikati underlined that “offerings and assistance do not discriminate between a patient and another.”
Told that some are accusing him of being “the Shiite Duo’s ruler,” Mikati said “let him remember how much he flexed his muscles when the Shiite Duo was supportive of him,” in reference to FPM’s chief Jebran Bassil.
Mikati’s decision to convene cabinet has reignited his standoff with the FPM, which refuses that any session be held amid the ongoing presidential vacuum.
In a statement, the FPM has warned that such a session would “violate the constitution,” stressing that it will not “bow to any blackmail.”
Reuters/ News Agencies
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