Beirut -
In the first government entitlement after elections that produced political blocs without a majority or a minority in the Lebanese parliament, President Michel Aoun issued a decree on Thursday assigning Najib Mikati to form the last government of his term, about 4 months before the presidential elections next October.
Mikati, with the mandatory consultations conducted by President Aoun, obtained 54 votes out of 128, 46 abstained from voting, and diplomat Nawaf Salam scored 25 votes, and one vote went to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
After his assignment, Mikati said, "We are facing a moment of historic responsibility, in which we all cooperate to complete the actual rescue process."
Mikati (centre) voted for him by 54 out of 128 deputies, and 46 abstained (Reuters)
Biography of the President-designate
The irony is that Mikati was appointed as the head of a government that entered the caretaker stage after the parliamentary elections, and when he was commissioned to form it, he won 72 votes.
While he refrained from running in the recent elections, as was the case with various former prime ministers, led by Saad Hariri, Fouad Siniora and Tammam Salam.
The premiership of the government is traditionally attributed to the Sunni community, which in turn complains about the dispersion of parliamentary representation, following the suspension of the Future Movement led by Hariri for the first time in its history, which made the appointment of Mikati the first of its kind also after Hariri’s absence as a competitor and a natural candidate for prime minister.
Mikati, 66, is a businessman and billionaire among the world's richest people, and Forbes magazine estimates his fortune at $2.7 billion.
Before the 2021 government, he headed two governments, in 2005 and 2011, and the latter was described as a one-color government that was dominated by the influence of Hezbollah.
Mikati's assignment on Thursday recorded facts that will play a pivotal role in the labors of forming his fourth government, the most prominent of which are:
The duo of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement and some of their March 8 allies voted in favor of Mikati.
The two largest Christian blocs, the Lebanese Forces Party and the Free Patriotic Movement, abstained from voting for Mikati, and did not grant the votes of their deputies to another candidate, knowing that they did not vote for Mikati in his last government.
The votes of the March 14 forces were scattered, as the forces abstained from voting for Nawaf Salam, while the Progressive Socialist Party bloc headed by Timur Walid Jumblatt voted for him.
10 MPs from the Forces for Change voted for peace, as an expression of their refusal to assign Mikati.
The absence of a Sunni bloc supporting Mikati, and the scattering of the Sunni MPs' votes between abstaining and supportive of Salam, and some votes went to Mikati.
In an analysis of the implications of Mikati's assignment, Al Jazeera Net interviewed: political analyst and writer Jean Aziz, journalist and political analyst Ali Hamadeh, and economist, Munir Younes.
Read the commissioning results
Aziz considers that Mikati received fewer votes than half of the parliament was expected, because since the fall of 2019, internal and external accounts have occurred, which led to the fragmentation of the Lebanese system and the hitting of its institutions.
Therefore, "the result of Mikati's assignment came as complementary to the results of the parliamentary elections and stemming from their nature, which entrenched the inability to administer the government."
He doubts Mikati’s ability to form a government before the end of President Aoun’s term, and under pressure from the collapse, he is likely to fully or partially re-float the caretaker government, which, in his opinion, has not proven its worth in approaching sensitive files, the latest of which was the demarcation of the border with Israel.
The political writer says that the assignment of Mikati lacks three legitimacy: the absence of the clear and declared sectarian legitimacy of his Sunni sect, the absence of sectarian pact legitimacy with significant Christian blocs abstaining from voting for him, and the absence of national legitimacy because Mikati does not have any parliamentary representation.
On the other hand, Hamadeh finds that the result of the mandatory consultations, as a result of the parliamentary elections, and its speaker, deputy, and office staff "reflected a loss of political positioning, as a result of the ambiguity of the choices of the weighty blocs, so they voted in a way that did not reflect the content of their political slogans."
As a Christian, Hamadeh believes that the Lebanese Forces wanted to convey a message that there would be no solutions before the end of President Aoun's term.
At a time when he did not vote for Mikati the Free Patriotic Movement (headed by Gibran Bassil) "because he did not reach an agreement with him about his share of the distribution of ministerial portfolios and appointments, so he wanted to formally strike the Christian charter of his government, and at the same time he might participate in it by expanding the share of the President of the Republic by the number of ministers in compensation for his absence." .
The question - important in his opinion - revolves around Mikati's ability to form a government, with the possibility that it will not see the light of day "as long as Mikati is the head of a minimally-functioning caretaker government."
Political and presidential challenges
Politically, Aziz is likely to link Mikati's authorship of his government to two dilemmas: - Internally, his anticipation of the outcome
of the political power struggle "in the bazaar" of authoritarian quotas in terms of distributing portfolios and administrative appointments.
Externally, his anticipation of the results of the external rhythm, especially after the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Ankara and his Arab tour, and what this rhythm will lead to in the middle of next month, with the visit of US President Joe Biden to Gulf and Arab countries.
Aziz believes that the most urgent file before the Mikati government is of a financial, monetary, economic and living nature, and he finds it incapable of addressing it, even though it is a mandatory entry into the agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
He describes the last months of Aoun's reign as harsh, also skeptical of Mikati's ability to deal with sensitive files during it, the first of which is the indirect border demarcation negotiations and the conflict over the lines and gas with Israel, "because his last government did not reflect skill in confronting and approaching it."
For his part, Hamada is surprised by the reliance on what the Mikati government can achieve, because it is a continuation of what he started without high ceilings.
"It is clear that the well-balanced parties in Parliament have settled on the view that change begins with the end of Aoun's era, and that the current stage is a time-reduction, without major tremors and aspirations," he said.
Hamada states that if the Mikati government is formed, it will not live for more than 3 months.
If a presidential vacuum occurs, it will play a pivotal role in managing the government, considering that the possibility of a presidential vacuum is equivalent to the possibility of electing a new president of the republic.
But Aziz considers that the officials' waiting for settlements abroad is pushing Lebanon strongly towards the presidential vacuum, despite its disastrous repercussions on the wheel of collapse and disintegration of the state's facilities and institutions.
Aoun meets with a delegation of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc within the framework of parliamentary consultations (Reuters)
Economic challenges
Before entering the caretaker stage, the Mikati government approved the economic recovery plan, and accompanied negotiations with the International Monetary Fund before signing a preliminary agreement on the staff level. About 85% towards the poverty classes.
Even if Mikati forms his government, Younes does not expect a decisive economic result from it, because it is a government of several months.
And if the vacuum continues later, it will be almost crippled "in the absence of political consensus on any real unified economic decision to resolve the crisis."
The economic expert finds that postponing the final agreement with the IMF is a likely possibility, if the next government does not push towards fundamental reforms that it demands in terms of approving the budget items, restructuring the banking sector, and unifying and liberalizing the exchange rate of the lira.
It is noteworthy that the Mikati government previously promised the employees an additional salary, which requires the approval of the budget and the printing of the central bank for the lira, that is, more inflation.
He finds that the electricity and energy file is "the most difficult problem that the government is anticipating, and the experience did not suggest the ability to treat it."
The serious challenge facing the Mikati government, according to Younes, is how to find a mechanism with the Central Bank and banks to return depositors' money, estimated at tens of billions.
He said, "It is clear that Lebanon is going to the so-called international rationing, and the best evidence of the French-Saudi fund that approved humanitarian aid, in exchange for the consensus of the international community, is that Lebanon's obtaining real aid and loans in the billions is conditional on an integrated basket of reforms that the government is responsible for pushing for its implementation."