ANSD : Legislative session eclipses Cabinet formation deadlock

SAT 20 - 4 - 2024

Date: Sep 24, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Legislative session eclipses Cabinet formation deadlock

_{Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star}
BEIRUT: With the monthslong Cabinet formation process entirely deadlocked, public and political attention will shift this week to a two-day legislative session of Parliament set to pass draft laws and loans aimed at shoring up the country’s ailing economy.

Speaker Nabih Berri is set to chair the morning and evening sessions Monday and Tuesday, the first legislative sessions since a new Parliament was elected on May 6.

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum are expected to ratify a large number of significant bills that have already been endorsed by joint parliamentary committees in the past few weeks.

Some proposals include projects related to the CEDRE conference.

The two-day session will be held amid political consensus by the country’s major blocs, reflecting their agreement on the need for Parliament to convene for “legislation of necessity,” despite the fact that the Cabinet is serving in a caretaker capacity. Any bills passed by Parliament need to be endorsed by a functioning government to become effective.

Topping the session’s agenda are draft laws that have been finalized by joint committees and are linked to structural economic reforms that Lebanon pledged to carry out during the CEDRE conference.

MP Yassine Jaber, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Committee, told The Daily Star the bills would include $150 million in funding for the Health Ministry’s comprehensive health care plan – $30 million from the Islamic Development Fund and the rest from the World Bank.

It would also include $200 million in funding for road improvement projects allocated to the Public Works and Transportation Ministry and $6 million for enhancing “financial governance” at the Finance Ministry.

In all, there are 29 draft laws and proposals on the Parliament’s agenda, many of which have already been approved by joint committees, the state-run National News Agency reported. These include a decentralized solid waste management draft law, a bill to fight corruption in oil and gas sector contracts, an electronic transactions and personal data draft law, and a draft law on court-supervised dispute mediation.

The agenda also includes a draft law aimed at protecting corruption whistleblowers and an urgent bill to support subsidized housing loans granted by the Public Corporation for Housing to people of limited income. This bill was added to the agenda by caretaker Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil who had said his ministry was ready to help resolve the housing loan crisis.

The housing loan crisis took a turn for the worse in March after Central Bank Gov. Riad Salameh announced that Banque du Liban’s 2018 funds for housing loans had been depleted due to unprecedented demand. BDL was using the funds to support low-interest housing loans offered to limited-income families. The Finance Ministry and Central Bank later pledged to inject more cash into the program.

The Parliament session comes a few days after France, through its ambassador in Beirut Bruno Foucher, called for the quick formation of a new government as an essential move to carry out the CEDRE conference reforms.

Held in Paris on April 6, the conference garnered economic support aimed at revitalizing Lebanon’s economy, burdened by more than $80 billion in public debt, and rebuilding its infrastructure.

However, the more than $11 billion in grants and soft loans pledged by countries and organizations, France included, to finance investment and infrastructure projects, were contingent on Lebanon carrying out structural economic reforms.

The absence of a new government is expected to delay the implementation of the loans and grants.

Among other things, Lebanon has promised to fight rampant corruption in the public administration, put an end to the waste of public funds and reduce deficit in the state-run Electricite du Liban. EDL’s deficit has strained the state Treasury for many years as successive governments have tried in vain to find a lasting solution to the chronic power rationing crisis.

The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly called on Lebanese authorities to end waste in the electricity sector. One of the IMF’s suggestions is to increase electricity prices in a bid to reduce the deficit. It also recommended removing electricity subsidies. The government has been subsidizing the price of electricity for consumers since 1983.

Meanwhile, President Michel Aoun flew to New York Sunday at the start of a five-day visit to the U.S., heading Lebanon’s delegation to the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Aoun, to be joined later by caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil as well as Lebanon’s ambassadors to the U.N. and Washington, Amal Mudallali and Gaby Issa, respectively, is expected to deliver a speech Wednesday afternoon Beirut time.

He will meet with U.N. chief Antonio Guterres afterward. Aoun is also set to meet with several Arab and foreign leaders on the sidelines of his visit. The president’s speech will focus on local and regional issues, including resolving the Syrian refugee crisis facing Lebanon, a source at Baabda Palace told The Daily Star last week.

No major development in the Cabinet formation crisis is expected while Aoun and his son-in-law, Bassil, the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, are in New York.

Bassil is currently at the center of an escalating row with the Lebanese Forces over Christian representation in the new government. He has been accused by LF officials of preventing the party from obtaining significant Cabinet representation commensurate with its parliamentary size. The LF nearly doubled its MPs from eight to 15 in the May 6 elections.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri presented his first draft Cabinet formula to Aoun on Sept. 3, but it has not managed to break the deadlock after having failed to gain the support of Aoun and the FPM. Aoun voiced a number of reservations over the formula, particularly over the allocation of ministerial posts to the LF and the Progressive Socialist Party

Hariri, who was appointed on May 24 to form a national unity government representing all the main political parties, said last week the Cabinet formation is still being held up by competing demands of the LF, the PSP and the Marada Movement.

PSP leader Walid Joumblatt is adamant on naming the three ministers reserved for the Druze sect in the new government, seemingly with the intent of excluding his Druze rival, MP Talal Arslan, an ally of the FPM.

The Marada Movement, headed by former MP Sleiman Frangieh, has demanded that it either retains the Public Works and Transport Ministry, or be allocated the Energy and Water Ministry, currently held by the FPM.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem warned that a further delay in the government formation would be detrimental to the country.

“We believe in national unity in regulating our political and practical matters in such a way to preserve the citizens’ rights to equality and justice.

“Hence, our keenness on the formation of a national unity government to protect political stability and serve the citizens’ interests, without any popular or political power feeling that it has been excluded.

“But a delay [in formation] is harmful for everyone,” Qassem told a Hezbollah-organized Ashoura gathering in the southern town of Nabatieh.

He urged rival factions not to seek strength from external powers in their jockeying for key Cabinet shares.

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