The return of pessimism .. Mikati is suspicious of the Saudi...

The Stock Exchange did not establish the formation of the government in righteousness, even after spreading all the atmosphere of optimism from the two main sources directly concerned with the issue, namely, President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati. Despite the consensus on most of the bags and their occupants, there is a hidden pole that prevented Mikati from going to Baabda yesterday evening, amid talk of an upcoming visit tomorrow, i.e. after the end of the public mourning day. with another.

The country has entered the countdown phase to form the government, with a 48-hour “time-out” set for Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati to head to Baabda Palace, given that today is a day of mourning for the late Sheikh Abdul-Amir Qabalan, the head of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council. This happened after all the parties concerned with the author’s endeavor to spread a positive atmosphere and complete agreement this time, an atmosphere that had been circulated during the end of last week and then was dropped the next day, which calls into question the validity of this harmony and whether matters have actually reached their conclusion as marketed by its makers.
“There is no objection or justification to disrupting the agreement between the presidents of the republic and the government,” say sources concerned with the formation, and point to an external atmosphere pushing for the formation of a government; The most recent of these is the contact between the two presidents: French Emmanuel Macron and Iranian Ibrahim Raisi, who supported this path, and Macron’s stress on “the necessity of France and Iran cooperating, along with Hezbollah, in order to form a strong Lebanese government.”
Perhaps, here lies the biggest obstacle. According to these sources, the French-Iranian communication on Lebanon and Macron’s mentioning of Hezbollah as an essential component of the composition may have made Mikati suspicious of the Gulf reaction, or rather Saudi Arabia. This prompted the president-designate to recalculate in terms of re-experiencing the 2011 government, despite all the rapid political changes in the previous two weeks that Mikati was supposed to capture to realize the extent of the difference between the two phases. The delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Zina Aker to Damascus obtained prior approval from the American ambassador, as well as the visit of Minister of Energy Raymond Ghajar today to Amman to participate in a meeting with the ministers of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, and to sign a memorandum of understanding regarding the transfer of Egyptian gas to Lebanon via Jordan and Syria, as well as for the signing of a Jordanian-Syrian-Lebanese memorandum to draw electricity from Jordan to Lebanon. The British newspaper, The Times, had pointed out in an article that “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the United States announced their readiness to work together on a plan to help Lebanon obtain electricity, evidence of a change in policies toward the Middle East led by US President Joe Biden.” Sufficient developments to indicate a change, albeit formally, in the performance of some international actors towards Lebanon and the political forces concerned with authorship, amid information that an American contact with Mikati informed him of the need to expedite the birth of the government.

For their part, the sources of the designated president deny that he is waiting for a Saudi green light or a blessing from the club of former prime ministers. Rather, they consider that there is no basic contract except that the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Representative Gibran Bassil, raises the ceiling of demands in order to push the Americans and the French to negotiate with him. While the sources indicate that the official in the US State Department, who called Mikati to urge him to speed up the formation of the government, also contacted the President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, for the same purpose. As for Baabda’s sources, they denied having contact with Aoun!
Among the conflicting information, follow-up circles believe that the chances of forming the government are equal to the lack of it, and that the deadlines set today were previously set a week ago and a week before, but none of them led to a decisive result, negative or positive.
For his part, the Director-General of Public Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, went yesterday morning to Baabda Palace, bringing with him a group of names from the President-designate for consultations, which received no objection from Aoun except about the proposed name of the Ministry of Economy, which is the first expert in social protection, labor and gender in the Sharq region. Middle East in the World Bank Hanin El-Sayed.
However, the lack of approval of the name of the master, according to the sources, does not stop the government, but rather it is resolved by replacing its name with another name. As of yesterday evening, the agreed names came according to the following: Henry Khoury for the Ministry of Justice, Abdullah Bou Habib for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Raffoul Al-Bustani for Social Affairs, Maurice Salim Defense, Walid Fayyad for Energy, the resigned member of the Beirut Municipal Council, Gabi Fernini, for the Ministry of the Displaced, Fadi Samaha for the Environment, Abbas Al-Halabi, Ministry of Education. While the Ministry of Industry went to Tashnaq, the Economy to Mikati, Youth and Sports to the Democratic Party, Communications and Media to the Marada Movement, Public Works and Transport and the Ministry of Labor to Hezbollah, and Finance and Culture to the Amal Movement, pending the selection of another ministry, either tourism or agriculture, one of which will go to the President of the Republic and the other to the Amal movement. Tomorrow day is supposed to be decisive in whether there is an internal decision on composition that intersects with a serious international intention.