BEIRUT: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said he supported President Michel Sleiman’s objections to mass appointments to public sector posts.

“I join my voice with President Sleiman on the appointments,” Berri said in remarks published Friday by the local newspaper An-Nahar.

“It is difficult to make appointments all at once. Vacant posts can be filled up successively after [political] consensus,” Berri added.

Sleiman Thursday rejected the concept of what he termed “package appointments” in which appointments to all posts in the public sector are made at the same time.

Instead, the president insisted on a mechanism agreed upon by the previous government under then Prime Minister Saad Hariri and endorsed by the current government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

The mechanism stipulates that appointments be made in succession whenever the specifications for any vacancy were met.

Sources involved in this issue told An-Nahar that Sleiman’s position aimed at putting an end to ongoing political attempts to make appointments quickly – particularly in top public sector posts – thereby allowing for tradeoffs over posts.

Sleiman’s position is likely to spark controversy and possibly be rejected by some political parties, particularly since some have previously threatened to use veto power to torpedo the appointments if their demands for sensitive public posts were not met, An-Nahar said.

Hezbollah MP Mohammad Fneish said last month that he hoped “a suitable political climate” would be available to move forward with the stalled issue of administrative appointments in the public sector.

“Either an agreement is reached on all these [disputed] posts, and thus there will be a complete agreement to go ahead with the appointment mechanism ... or the disputed posts will be set aside and the rest of appointments tackled,” Fneish had said. “This has to do with ... political decisions.”