Arab News

BEIRUT: Lebanese businessman Najib Mikati is set to be nominated as Prime Minister for the third time after securing 73 votes, more than two-thirds of parliament’s votes.

Parliamentary consultations to designate a new Prime Minister kicked off this morning, with Mikati receiving an outright majority of support from MPs while 19 MPs either boycotted the session or abstained. 

Former premier Saad Hariri, who stepped down earlier this month, voted for Mikati along with the rest of his parliamentary bloc. MP Elie Ferzli, who serves as Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, also backed Mikati. The Marada Movement, Hezbollah, Amal Movement and the Progressive Socialist Party also voted for Mikati.

Earlier in the day,  Mikati met with President Michel Aoun briefly before exiting without giving any statements. The Lebanese Forces, the country’s second-largest Christian bloc, refrained from voting for anyone, in line with its previous stance since mass protests kicked off in late 2019.

MP George Adwan, a member of the LF’s bloc, said his group will not “cover any government from the current political class.”

MP Osama Saad, an independent MP from Sidon, also abstained. MP Fouad Makhzoumi, meanwhile, voted for Nawaf Salam, a Lebanese diplomat, jurist, and academic.

This will be the the third attempt within a year to form a government amid deepening political and economic turmoil.

The country has been without a fully functioning government since then-prime minister Hassan Diab resigned in the wake of the Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people last August.

Despite an economic crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the world’s worst since the mid-19th century, political squabbling has repeatedly thwarted progress, with two designated premiers failing to form a cabinet since then.

Talks have begun in the presidential palace at 10:30 am and will run until the afternoon with a final pick announced by the end of the day, said the official National News Agency.

Three of Lebanon’s former prime ministers — Hariri, Fouad Siniora and Tamam Salam — on Thursday said they would endorse Mikati’s candidacy.

The 65-year-old political veteran will be expected to deliver a lineup that satisfies political leaders jostling for cabinet shares and ministerial portfolios.

It could take months before an actual government is formed, but crisis-hit Lebanon, grappling with soaring poverty, a plummeting currency and shortages of basic items from medicine to fuel, can ill afford any delays.

International donors led by former colonial power France have pledged millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, but conditioned it on Lebanon installing a government capable of tackling corruption.

But even as international pressure mounted, with threats of European Union sanctions against them, Lebanese politicians have failed to make any serious progress.

France this month said it would host an aid conference on August 4 to “respond to the needs of the Lebanese, whose situation is deteriorating every day.”

The date of the conference coincides with the first anniversary of the port blast which is widely blamed on decades of negligence by the country’s ruling class.

(With  AFP)