BEIRUT: Change and Reform bloc member Ibrahim Kanaan Friday attacked Prime Minister Najib Mikati and recommended that he respect the Constitution, in a sign of escalating tensions between members of Lebanon’s government.
“This Constitutional trap created by Prime Minister Najib Mikati violates the Constitution and this is unacceptable,” Kanaan told the Kataeb-run Voice of Lebanon radio station.
He stressed the need to respect ministerial representation “since intimidation won’t help.”
President Michel Sleiman, upon Mikati’s request, suspended Wednesday’s Cabinet session following a dispute with pro-Aoun ministers over public appointments.
Kanaan described as “unhealthy” the decision to suspend Cabinet meetings and said it should be revoked.
He said he believed the dispute could be settled by simply respecting the Constitution.
“The Cabinet crisis does not need mediation, but rather respecting the Constitution,” he said.
Addressing Mikati, Kanaan said: “We, too, are not in a hurry if the issue is going to be at the expense of who we represent.”
He was commenting on remarks made by Mikati published in Al-Akhbar newspaper Friday in which the prime minister said he was not in a rush to make civil service appointments.
“I’m not in a hurry. But I’m concerned about [government] productivity,” Mikati told Al-Akhbar.
“I want everyone to know who is really hindering [appointments],” Mikati said.
He said pro-Aoun ministers wanted to appoint Ghassan Baydoun as the Energy Ministry “and we agreed.”
“They suggested a name for the post of director at the Industry [Ministry] and we approved,” Mikati added.
He said Aoun’s ministers had also twice turned down proposals by Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour concerning the appointment of a new general secretary at the ministry.
Energy Minister Jibran Bassil, a member in Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, also slammed Mikati.
“The prime minister has asked us to choose between diminishing our powers or suspension of the work of the Cabinet,” Bassil said in remarks published Friday.
His comments came following a meeting Thursday evening with Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai in Bkirki.
Bassil said he had briefed Rai on “what really happened [during Cabinet’s Wednesday meeting], because it is not an ordinary dispute.”
Kanaan also blasted Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt, who along with Sleiman and Mikati form a centrist bloc in the government, for criticizing pro-Aoun ministers.
“Let him [Jumblatt] give us back our [lost] power in the mountains and return the displaced,” Kannan said.
For his part, Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud, another member in Aoun’s FPM, questioned the prerogatives of the office of prime minister.
“Are the rights of the prime minister not rights for other ministers?” Abboud asked in an interview with the Kataeb-run Voice of Lebanon.
“It is essential that the path be corrected and that the need for relinquishing the sanctity of the second presidency [office of prime minister],” he said.
“The leading offices cannot impose the issue of appointments on a minister, given that the latter is the head of the pyramid in his ministry,” he added.