As expected, in a swift move, appointed Prime Minister Najib Mikati tossed the ball of government formation into the court of President Michel Aoun, presenting him, as has become known, with an amended governmental lineup. Mikati's approach is based on two options: changing some faces in the caretaker government and replacing them with new names he deems more effective, and swapping some ministries associated with a certain political team and assigning them to other ministers to reactivate them more and remove them from the "market" of political bickering, accusations, and suspicions surrounding them. This is exemplified by the Ministry of Energy, which Mikati removed from the oversight of Minister Walid Fayad and assigned to engineer Walid Sano.
While awaiting an official response from the President to his vision for the new government, political sources predicted through "Anbaa" that "Aoun is not inclined to agree to form the government in this manner, as his political team, even though it did not participate in naming Mikati to head the government, refuses to relinquish the shares it considers its own. This puts the appointed PM in a position to reconsider his lineup because the issue of confidence is essential for any government to begin functioning, especially since the 54 MPs who nominated Mikati to form the government cannot grant it confidence alone; it needs an additional 12 MPs. If the Strong Republic bloc and the MPs who named Nawaf Salam refuse to grant confidence, Mikati's government, if formed, would be in a precarious position."
In light of this, the sources considered Mikati's proposed lineup to be "just a trial balloon aimed at uncovering the obstructive intentions practiced by Aoun and his team, which quickly criticized Mikati's move."
