Early Cracks Raise Questions About Cabinet's Ability to Survive (Cabinet‪)‬

Hardly two months in office and cracks have appeared in Prime Minister Najib Mikati's Cabinet, the one-sided Hizbullah-dominated government widely hailed as a panacea for the country's worsening political and economic ills. Hopes for the Mikati team to prove that it is different from the previous government of former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, whose one-year rule was marked by internal splits and paralysis, were dashed quickly in a row that erupted last month among ministers over a controversial $1.2 billion electricity plan. The plan, which calls for the allocation of $1.2 billion to the Energy Ministry to build power plants capable of producing 700 megawatts, has exposed a split in the Cabinet between Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader MP Michel Aoun on the one hand, and Mikati and Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) leader MP Walid Jumblat on the other. The draft law was presented by Aoun to Parliament before it was returned to the Cabinet for further study.