MP in Lebanon’s Democratic Gathering bloc, Hadi Abul Hassan, warned against stalling in the formation of a new government, noting that such delay would have negative repercussions in the wake of the economic crisis facing the country. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Abul Hassan accused some political forces of failing to assume their national responsibilities and seeking to monopolize power by insisting on the “vetoing third” in the government. “A country cannot be built with the policy of exclusion, obstruction and monopoly,” he stated. The deputy stressed that talks about the Christian and Druze nodes, which are allegedly delaying the formation of the government, were only a pretext to cover the main node, represented by the insistence of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), specifically Minister Gebran Bassil, to have the vetoing third in the new cabinet. “We, as the Democratic Gathering and the Progressive Socialist Party, are not interested in quotas. This is a logic that we don’t support at all, but we also refuse to have our rights violated. We believe that it is our duty to respect those who elected us and entrusted us with those rights,” he said. Commenting on the Syrian refugee file, Abul Hassan stressed that the PSP supported the voluntary and safe return of the displaced. “If the conditions remain as they are now, we do not believe that the return will be safe, unless the required guarantees are provided, whether by Russia or the United Nations,” he noted.