Nawaf Salam, the head of the International Court of Justice, looked on course to become Lebanon’s prime minister after more than half of lawmakers backed him for the post on Monday, reflecting the weakened position of Hezbollah which wanted Najib Mikati to keep the job.
Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc on Monday asked President Joseph Aoun to postpone its consultations meeting with him until Tuesday, but the president rejected their request which forced Hezbollah to reverse its decision and agreed to meet Aoun at 3: 30 PM as was originally scheduled
But by 3:45 pm, the bloc was still not present at the Baabda Palace.
“The Hezbollah and Amal blocs have expressed their dismay over the inclination to name Nawaf Salam as premier,” Al-Arabiya quoted sources as saying.
The designation of Salam would mark a huge blow to the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its ally Speaker Nabih Berri, who wanted their ally the incumbent Najib Mikati, to keep his post.
The support for Salam underlined the big shift in the power balance among Lebanon’s sectarian factions since the Shi’ite group Hezbollah was pummeled in the war with Israel and its ally Bashar al-Assad was toppled in Syria last month.
The election last week of army commander General Joseph Aoun as head of state, a choice backed by the United States, also showed the shift in Lebanon’s political landscape, in which Hezbollah had long held decisive sway.
Mikati
The money-laundering allegations against caretaker PM Najib Mikati reportedly did not help him in getting the job
Mikati denied all allegations of money-laundering after a complaint was filed in France by two anti-corruption groups last May but rumors continued to swirl in Beirut.
The complaint against Najib Mikati was formally filed in May 2024 with France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s office by French anti-corruption non-governmental organization Sherpa and the Collective of Victims of Fraudulent and Criminal Practices.
In a statement, Sherpa said the objective is to “shed light on the conditions under which Lebanese political figures like Najib Mikati accumulated considerable wealth and on the role of financial intermediaries who facilitated these acquisitions.”
The group said it drew the attention of French prosecutors to the conditions under which Mikati “has accumulated significant assets in France. The complaint also questions the origin of the funds that transited through the French banking system.”
The complaints said that the Lebanese public consider Mikati, his brother Taha and their entourage as “the embodiment… of the clientelism and conflict of interest that have led Lebanon to its downfall”.
The two associations accuse Mikati and his brother of having likely “acquired various properties in France and abroad, via multiple structures and through extremely large financial transfers.
Links to Assad
Mikati was also accused by the Free Syrian Army in 2013 of conducting financial activities for former president Bashar al – Assad, his wife, and to people close to him, in addition to money laundering and buying assets for them through the commercial companies of the Mikati family.”