Geagea: Salam’s cabinet formation moving in the required direction

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said on Wednesday that statements regarding the delay in the cabinet formation are not accurate, given that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and former PM Saad Hariri both took at least five months to form their cabinets.

"PM-Designate Tammam Salam’s cabinet formation process is moving in the desired direction."             

In a televised interview, Geagea said the new government will have the mission of supervising the parliamentary elections, adding that the electoral operation will take place next summer 'in the best-case scenario'. He stressed that the new electoral law will be based on the hybrid draft law which has never been adopted in Lebanon, noting that the interior ministry must insert many amendments that will impose a technical postponement in the elections.                

On the new cabinet, Geagea said that it would be unrealistic to suggest a political or national unity government amid the current circumstances.                        

“The last experience proved its failure, the cabinet is a legislative authority not a dialogue table. Dialogue, debates, deliberations and discussions should take place at Parliament, while the cabinet is formed to perform assigned duties and works,” he said.                        

Commenting on Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon, the LF leader said that they neither are, nor have they ever been ready to cover Hezbollah’s military presence in Syria.  

“We never believed in the equation of ‘Army, People and Resistance’; however, we adopt the equation of ‘People, State and Army’,” Geagea stated, stressing that they agreed to adopt the Baabda Declaration as the ministerial statement of the new cabinet.                            

On Syria, Geagea said that the Syrian influence is still present in Lebanon through the “regime’s angels and demons”, confirming that the fate of the Syrian President Bashar Assad is “the inevitable fall”.