Appointment of central bank chief delayed amid 'Aoun-Salam disagreement'

Cabinet failed Monday to approve a mechanism for administrative appointments, deciding to continue discussions in Thursday’s session, which had been dedicated to naming a new central bank governor, a media report said.

“The governor file will instead be discussed in a Cabinet session on Friday,” Al-Akhbar newspaper reported Tuesday.

“The delay in naming the governor is not exclusively linked to the mechanism, on which no consensus has been reached, but also to the dispute between President Joseph Aoun and PM Nawaf Salam,” the daily said.

Salam, “along with local parties including the Kulluna Irada organization, wants to eliminate Aoun’s candidate Karim Soaid, the brother of ex-MP Fares Soaid, and instead prefers to name Issam Abou Sleiman or ex-minister Jihad Azour, knowing that the latter is rejected by Aoun,” Al-Akhbar quoted informed sources as saying.