Jumblat Calls for Granting Centrists Greater Power in Cabinet: No Party Should Overpower Other

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stressed on Monday the need to form a new government in Lebanon that “can help restore the role of constitutional institutions in Lebanon.”

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website: “No party should overpower the other in a new cabinet.”

He also demanded that centrists be granted greater power in the new government.

Moreover, he remarked that the dispute over the parliamentary electoral law has helped return the rival Lebanese factions to dialogue, noting: “The debate succeeded in bringing them together after they failed to do so for the sake of civil peace.”

“There can be no substitute for dialogue among the Lebanese to tackle contentious issues, such as the resistance's possession of arms,” continued the MP.

Jumblat remarked that the use of these arms or those of any other faction “will only serve as an impossible adventure that had failed in the past.”

“We therefore believe that political disputes, no matter how complicated they are, should be strictly tackled through dialogue and understanding away from the mentality of eliminating or isolating the other,” he said.

“We should all restore the role of state institutions through forming a government of national unity or national interests,” he stated.

The new cabinet should take “bold and radical” steps in tackling the economic and social suffering in Lebanon, stressed Jumblat.

On the parliamentary electoral law, he said: “We have seen how some draft laws almost caused Lebanon and the Taef Accord's fragmentation. It is as if some sides did not derive lessons from the wars of the past.”

“The political class should realize the importance of stability and end the charade over the electoral law and reach an agreement over a draft law within an acceptable time period, which will help tackle the people's concerns and avert leading Lebanon towards the Syrian crisis,” he urged.