According to information from Al-Jadeed, a Cabinet meeting is likely to take place on Friday, January 12. Starting today, political pressure will be applied for the appointment of an Army chief-of-staff, a subject that will be discussed outside the agenda.
This issue, which was already time-sensitive ahead of the December 15 extension of Army Commander-in-Chief Joseph Aoun’s mandate, is currently taking on a political dimension.
The Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) would like Hassan Audi, a Druze officer, to be appointed to the post. However, caretaker Minister of Defense Maurice Slim (close to the Free Patriotic Movement) had already refused several times to allow a caretaker government to appoint an official in the absence of a president.
The General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers announced earlier on Tuesday afternoon that Najib Mikati’s caretaker government planned to convene a government meeting with many urgent subjects on the agenda. The document distributed by the secretariat comprises seven pages with 34 substantiated points.
Ten other points are proposed by the Ministry of the Environment and the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) to ensure the continuity of waste management. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the municipalities of the southern suburbs wanted to prohibit waste from the cazas of Chouf, Aley and Baabda from being dumped in the Costa Brava landfill. The landfill’s operation was extended for a further six months on Monday.
