It is expected that the agenda of next Monday’s Cabinet session will include two basic items, the first related to “the Ministry of Finance presenting its proposals aimed at correcting public sector salaries and wages.”
This demand, which was presented by associations and unions to senior officials, was agreed to be discussed and approved before the end of this month. As for the second item, it includes “the Ministry of Finance’s request to approve a draft decree aimed at giving a monthly financial grant to active and retired military personnel who benefit from a retirement pension.”
Al-Akhbar newspaper reported: There will be a main item on the agenda related to public sector salaries, at a time when the state, represented by Finance Minister Yassin Jaber, announces its inability to pay, despite the promises made by the government, especially to the military, during the budget approval session. If the government retreats from its responsibilities, it is expected that the movement in the street will increase, as retired military personnel in particular, in addition to public administration employees, threaten large-scale movements, strikes and sit-ins, which will put the authority under great pressure.
The government is also supposed to discuss an item in which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates requests approval to change Ambassador Jean Murad’s work station to be in the central administration instead of the Lebanese Embassy in Cyprus, with Ambassador Rina Charbel being appointed to the Lebanese Embassy in Cyprus instead.
According to Al-Akhbar information, Minister Youssef Raji took a decision to keep Murad in the central administration after the State Shura Council accepted the review of the appeal she submitted against the Lebanese state, represented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, due to her being summoned to the central administration on September 14, 2023 during the era of the late Minister Abdullah Bou Habib without legal justification, knowing that she was then occupying the position of Lebanon’s representative in its permanent mission to the United Nations. After the election of President Joseph Aoun, she was appointed to an advisory position in the Republican Palace until the diplomatic formations that transferred her to Cyprus were issued.
Murad, who was included in the diplomatic appointments project in June 2025 by appointing her as Lebanese ambassador to Cyprus. Raji was supposed to sign the decree appointing her to join her work station there, but he waited for the Shura Council’s decision. With the appeal accepted and the decision to summon her deemed arbitrary and illegal, the Lebanese state will pay her financial compensation covering the period she spent in Lebanon since September 14, 2023, meaning that she will receive her dues for the past two years as if she had continued her diplomatic duties in New York and had not been summoned.
Accordingly, Raji believed that her appointment in Cyprus was justified because she spent two years in the central administration between 2023 and 2025, but after she was compensated as if she had remained in New York, the justification for transferring her to Cyprus would be dropped, and “attaching her to the central administration becomes the logical administrative option.”
