"An-Nahar" indicated that this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that the official authority, with all its components and forces, faces a buildup of urgent and intertwined priorities at a highly sensitive and critical timing. However, this time the experience carries significant danger regarding the formulation of the most alarming scenario. Lebanon, having just emerged from parliamentary elections, faces a series of simultaneous "heavyweight" urgent matters, both internally and regionally, starting from the issue of forming a new government, moving through the negotiations on the maritime borders between Lebanon and Israel, and reaching the need to contain the cascading repercussions of the financial, economic, and social collapse, as the countdown begins for the most significant upcoming event: the presidential elections at the end of October.
Although the maritime border issue and gas exploration have recently been at the forefront of developments and the internal scene, its transformation into a bidding war has not obscured the initial signs of rising skepticism toward the intentions and directions of the hesitant presidency regarding executing the obligatory parliamentary consultations for commissioning a figure to form the new government. Notably, no serious information has yet surfaced regarding a near date for conducting the consultations, meanwhile, justifications and arguments for hesitation are leaking, revealing that work is underway behind the scenes to preemptively set the major foundations for the new government and impose them on the designated president, whether the choice ultimately falls again on President Najib Mikati or someone else.
Opposition parliamentary circles have warned that the country is heading toward a serious crisis if the presidency continues to ignore that a new parliamentary council has been elected, noting that the Sunni component will also not stand by watching its constitutional position being paralyzed and its powers manipulated through the ongoing freeze on consultations, followed by a return to the dangerous game long practiced by the political cadre of preempting the commission with a coalition deal and its quotas. They stated that a session to finalize the election of committees will be held on Friday afternoon, closing off the flimsy formal excuses before the presidency for delaying the governmental duty. Afterward, the door for opposing pressures will swing wide open, urging the presidency to expedite the scheduling of consultations and to allow constitutional and parliamentary norms to take their course, especially as the country needs a fully empowered government as soon as possible, capable of mobilizing 24 hours a day for several months leading up to the end of the current presidency, given the severity of the challenges it will face domestically and externally during this period.
On another note, well-informed political sources revealed to "Al-Jumhuriya" that recent days have seen unannounced communication and consultations on multiple levels, centered around the individual who will be tasked with forming the government and the shape of the new government. The sources indicated that the main obstacle ahead of the consultations is the "name game," where the list of candidate names for those to be commissioned in the obligatory consultations consists of a group of traditional names circulated in every governmental event. They confirmed that the name of President Najib Mikati remains at the forefront alongside some new names recently proposed by certain official references, but noted that this has not garnered responses from the other parties.
The sources viewed that President Michel Aoun is ultimately obligated to call for the obligatory consultations, whether tomorrow or the day after, considering that the period of hesitation in this regard is not long, where its limits do not exceed a few days.
