In his delivered speech during today’s parliamentary session, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said: “In form, we are before a president of the republic who exercises a constitutional right to address a letter to the parliament, asking to discuss its content and take the appropriate decision towards it…But in fact, we are before a president of the republic who says to the deputies: You named a prime minister whom I do not want and will not allow to form a government, so please get me rid of him!”
He added, “We have all read that this letter aims to absolve His Excellency of the charge of obstructing the cabinet formation, just like the letters addressed to foreign capitals to protect some of the entourage members and the political team from sanctions brandished by the European Union or countries. The truth is actually beyond that detail, for it is not in the form but rather in the foundation.”
Hariri considered that the president of the republic aims at having the constitution amended to suit his goals, and in the event that his wishes are not met, he would disrupt political life in the country, and, more seriously, suspend any hope for the Lebanese to stop the catastrophic collapse of their state.
In this context, he hoped for a prolonged life for His Beatitude, Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, and His Holiness, Pope Francis, so as to witness who is truly adhering to equality and full partnership in the country, and to the rights of Christians and their survival in their homeland, Lebanon. “For seven months, we have placed the PM-designate before an impossible equation: either the government is formed as per the terms of the president’s political team, impersonating the will of his Excellency while claiming to have no demands, or else there is no government,” Hariri underlined.
Consequently, the Prime Minister-designate vowed herein not to form a government as desired by the team of His Excellency the President, nor as per the aims of any particular political group. “I will only form the government according to the requirements of stopping the collapse and preventing the huge collision that threatens the Lebanese people in their daily sustenance, livelihood and state…I have said since the very first day of my acceptance of this noble yet critical national mission, with the tremendous challenges ahead, that I will solely form a government of non-partisan specialists, which has become a precondition for any external support, detailed in the roadmap that has become known as the French initiative,” he emphasized.
Hariri indicated that the constitution clearly affirms that the government is considered resigned if its head resigns or more than a third of its members resign. Thus, the President of the Republic’s gaining of a third veto power would enable him to dismiss the government in a disguised constitutional amendment, as he explained.
“His Excellency the President is not satisfied with obstructing the constitutional life and preventing the formation of the government. Rather, he claims in his letter to you that the Prime Minister-designate is incapable of forming the cabinet and is failing to conduct parliamentary consultations and to deliberate with the President of the Republic! The truth, which you all know, is that I did everything that was necessary, and more, and endured the intolerable, to reach a government that would start to fight the collapse,” Hariri underscored, addressing the members of parliament.
Source: National News Agency