At least nine ministers have declared their intention to boycott the Council of Ministers convened for this coming Monday by the outgoing Prime Minister of Lebanon, Nayib Mikati; a meeting conceived by the head of government to assess the support he has after his delegitimization by the country’s former president Michel Aoun.
Among the ministers who have refused to appear are the heads of such important portfolios as Defense (Maurice Sélim), Justice (Henry Khoury) or Economy (Amine Salam).
In his farewell to the post on October 30, Aoun confirmed the delivery to Parliament of a letter that made official the resignation of the outgoing Council of Ministers of Mikati, who has continued to serve despite having resigned since the end of the previous legislature, with the election in May of a new Parliament. However, the missive was a rather blunt attack on the current functions of the outgoing Prime Minister.
In this context, outgoing ministers Abdallah Bou Habib, Amine Salam, Hector Hajjar, Walid Fayad, Walid Nassar, George Bouchikian and Issam Charafeddine, along with those already mentioned, have announced this Sunday that they will not attend the Council of Ministers, reports ‘L’Orient le Jour’.
«We cannot consider presidential vacancy as something normal in the country,» the ministers made known after recalling that the country’s Parliament has failed up to eight times to vote a successor for Aoun and understand that this Council of Ministers to the greater glory of Mikati is practically a constitutional violation.
Aoun himself denounced again this Sunday, in a statement reported by the Naharnet portal, that Mikati’s call is nothing more than an expression of his «attempts to monopolize power and impose his will on the Lebanese against the provisions of the Constitution, the rules and the National Pact».
«His unjustifiable move plunges the country into a precedent that Lebanese national life has never seen, with repercussions for political stability,» the former leader warned.
If part of the opposition agrees on the candidacy of Michel Moawad, president of the secular Independence Movement, the deputies of Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and the Shiite tandem Amal-Hezbollah do no more than vote blank and withdraw from the sessions in the first round of voting, with the consequent loss of the quorum necessary to go ahead with it.
