NNA - The Cabinet convened Thursday at Baabda palace under the chairmanship of Lebanese President, Michel Sleiman, in presence of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, to look into some 24 items remaining from yesterday's ordinary ministerial meeting.
Ministers are mainly scheduled to skim through whether to forward a long-simmering dossier of salary scale to the Parliament with a view to endorsement or not.
This fiddly quandary has bogged down the country into a month-long labor strike nationwide, as ministers are still undecided on the sources of funding the civil servants' wage hike, already approved at the Cabinet.
Speaking to reporters before the session started, Public Works and Transportation Minister, Ghazi Aridi, said the mobilization spearheaded by the Union Coordination Committee was the most significant experience after the Lebanese civil war.
But the Progressive Socialist Party Minister rejected that inaccurate figures be adopted in terms of the funding.
For his part, Finance Minister, Mohammad Safadi, said funding the salary scale must be done from outside the state budget, already drowning in some LBP 1428 billion deficit.
But he said that the scale would be ratified "through politics," although it would be harmful to national economy.
The contentious formation of a body to oversee the next legislative polls is also on-the-table of today's session.
Justice Minister, Shakib Qortbawi, said the related opinion of President Sleiman was pending, noting that ministers will today look into a relevant legal brief written by Qortbawi himself.
Environment Minister, Nazem Khoury, voiced support for forming the body to supervise the elections, tentatively scheduled for June.
In turn, Agriculture Minister, Hussein Hajj Hassan, confirmed that he would not vote for forming the said body.
March 8 ministers refuse to approve this item because they believe this step would mean to proceed with the polls based upon the current 1960 winner-takes-all system.
Both Sleiman and Mikati had met in a one-to-one before the Cabinet convened, and discussed the current general situation and latest developments.
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