So far, the date for parliamentary consultations is still set for Monday, to make room for consultations, but it seems that these consultations will be postponed, as till now no name has been reached due to lack of serious consultations. President’s Hariri’s refusal to name a candidate, is the main obstacle, at a time, President Nabih Berri is working on persuading him to participate in the decision of delivering a prime minister, and the rabbit proposed by President Nabih Berri is for Hariri to recommend a person and not naming him, and thus Hariri will not be backing down from what he emphasized in his television appearance that he will not name name, but he will facilitate. But Berri’s attempt has not succeeded yet, and he is betting that days will ease Hariri’s anger, after his return from Abu Dhabi, to which he left today, to resume consultations with him again.
Any name, has not been settled yet, and some blocs did not take a final stance regarding naming or not, in Monday’s consultations, if happens, waiting for a serious proposal. Attempts to search specifically in the eighth of March ranks for the alternative began, but it has not reached the decisive point yet, though Nasrallah and Nabih Berri consider Beit Al Wasat an obligatory passage for any candidate.
President Berri for instance, wants president Najib Mikati, through whom he will be blocking the way to any name chosen by President Aoun and his political party, as Aoun and Bassil reject Mikati who will be asking for Hariri’s blessings as a condition to give his approval, besides the previous experience with Mikati within the government, was not a successful one. But if an approval is to be reached on Mikati to be recommended by Hariri and accepted by the blocs affiliated with Hezbollah and Berri, then Aoun will not be able to do anything but accept the consultation’s results.
Even Hezbollah, and out of concern for the Sunni-Shiite relationship and fear of any tension between the two sects, insists that the candidate should obtain Hariri’s recommendation to get its approval, as it does not want to repeat Hassan Diab’s experience or, according to information, deliver a candidate who is fully affiliated with him, and so, sources confirm that he does not approve on MP Faisal Karami, for example, it also refused to discuss the name of Ambassador Nawaf Salam after he was presented by the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Gibran Bassil, and told Hezbollah that he had no objection on him, but it was the party that rejected Nawaf Salam.
According to the information, the head of the Free Patriotic Movement also suggested, in his last meeting with the party last Sunday, three names: MP Faisal Karami, Dr. Abd al-Rahman al-Bizri and Jawad Adra, husband of Minister Zina Aker, but the party informed him that Hariri’s approval is necessary in these circumstances, and it is worth noting that former heads of government, and in Friday’s meeting, did not reach a final decision regarding the consultations, with the possibility of not facilitating the task for the President of the Republic. Former heads of government kept their meetings open, and their willingness to participate in consultations may be the only settled decision so far.
