By Moutaz Ali.
Tripoli, 27 August 2016:
Tomorrow it will be back to the drawing board when Faiez Serraj and his fellow members of the Presidency Council sit down for the third time to produce a cabinet for the Government of National Accord acceptable to the House of Representatives. Their second attempt, drawn up way back in February, was finally thrown out this week by parliament.
It has demanded that the PC come up with a smaller cabinet with no more than eight ministries.
When the PC meets in the Prime Ministry building at 11 am it will once again number eight. Omar Al-Aswad from Zintan this week said he was ending his boycott and rejoining the PC so that he could take part in in drafting a replacement for the earlier proposed 13-ministry GNA .
Serraj has insisted that the meeting was crucially important. “It is taking place at a fateful and difficult time as the country suffers serious crises. This imposes on us the duty to forget our differences and make the country’s wider interests a priority”.
The ninth PC member Ali Gatrani from the east is expected to continue his boycott of the body. Earlier this month he said that Serraj was in a “political coma”. He has nevertheless been urged by the HoR to rejoin the body and help draw up the new, slimmed-down cabinet.
