Report: Aoun Impatient with Delay in Cabinet Formation

President Michel Aoun is not pleased with the stalled efforts to form a new government one month after his election and is mulling the formation of a "realistic" cabinet shall the process witness further stalemates, media reports said Wednesday..

Sources following up closely on the negotiations to line-up a cabinet, said that Aoun will not tolerate to wait too long for the formation process to be complete and refuses “exhausting the momentum that his term had witnessed” after his election on October 31.

They added that the President will not accept the repetition of bitter experiences that lingered during the previous term of President Michel Suleiman when the formation process took months to complete. Therefore forming a "realistic cabinet not a de-facto cabinet" would be one of the options that Baabda would take into consideration.

Christian medians said that the conflict over portfolios could be solved by allotting the public works portfolio to the Lebanese Forces, the health to Speaker Nabih Berri and the education ministry to Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh. They described this distribution as “fair.”

Wrangling between political parties over the distribution of ministerial portfolios have stalled the efforts of Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri to line-up a new cabinet.

Last month, the parliament elected Aoun, a former general, as president ending a two-and-half-year deadlock that left Lebanon without a president.

Hariri is still facing obstacles bringing together a line-up that balances Lebanon's delicate sectarian-based political system. At stake is the distribution of the most powerful portfolios like the defense ministry and other key portfolios including the public works.

The political parties are also bickering over amending the current majoritarian or winner-takes-all election law which divides seats among the different religious sects.

The current parliament has failed to amend the law, and has extended its mandate twice amid criticism. New elections are scheduled for May 2017.