Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Speaker Nabih Berri Wednesday defended his push for a legislative session to pass urgent draft laws in the face of a possible boycott by the country’s main Christian parties over an electoral law proposal, by stressing that the National Pact on power sharing should not be used as a tool for obstruction.

Berri called for two legislative sessions to be held next week, the first in more than a year in a bid to prevent Lebanon from losing millions of dollars in loans and grants.

The sessions, set for Nov. 12 and 13, will study and approve draft laws and proposals listed on the agenda, the National News Agency reported.

Berri’s move came a day after Parliament’s Secretariat approved an agenda of 40 draft laws that excluded an electoral law proposal, a divisive issue that could torpedo the legislative session. The long-awaited session is intended to endorse urgent draft laws, including releasing $600 million in World Bank soft loans.

An electoral law and a citizenship draft law are major demands of the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces, which have linked their participation in any legislative session to adding these two draft laws to the agenda.

While a draft law that would grant foreigners of Lebanese origin Lebanese citizenship was included in the agenda, Parliament’s Secretariat Tuesday decided to leave the electoral draft law off the agenda in the absence of consensus on this issue.

The Kataeb Party has said that amid the 17-month presidential vacuum it will not attend any legislative session before the election of a president. The LF has criticized the exclusion of an electoral law from the agenda of the upcoming legislative session. LF MP Antoine Zahra said Tuesday his party would announce its position on a legislative session when its final agenda has been set.

But a senior official in MP Michel Aoun’s FPM said Wednesday his party would boycott the upcoming legislative session if an electoral draft law was not listed on the agenda.

“If an electoral draft law was not put on the agenda of the legislative session, there is a serious possibility that we will not attend. This would make the session lose the National Pact’s requirements [on Muslim-Christian partnership] as a result of the absence of the LF and the Kataeb, too,” former minister Salim Joreisati said in an interview with the Central News Agency.

“We are not putting selective obstacles for not attending a legislative session. All we want is for the agenda to include an electoral law,” Joreisati said. He added that following the extension of Parliament’s mandate twice, a legislative session that does not discuss an electoral law should not be held.

The last time Parliament met was on Nov. 5, 2014, when MPs voted to extend their terms by more than two and a half years. A similar vote took place in May 2013 when lawmakers voted for a 17-month extension, effectively cancelling parliamentary elections scheduled for that year.

Joreisati was firm in saying that Berri would not convene a legislative session in the absence of the largest Christian parties.

However, Berri, in an apparent response to a possible boycott of the legislative session by the FPM and the LF, said the National Pact’s requirements on equal power sharing between Muslims and Christians should not be used as a tool to obstruct Parliament’s work.

“The resumption of legislative work has become more than necessary for the country. This situation cannot go on as it is amid the financial, economic and social risks that are aggravating day after day,” Berri was quoted as saying by MPs during his weekly meeting with lawmakers at his Ain al-Tineh residence.

“It’s time for all of us to pay attention to the country’s interest and to shoulder our responsibilities,” Berri said. “The National Pact’s [requirements on partnership] mean in the first place the preservation of the nation and citizens rather than increasing obstruction and collapse.”

Commenting on the ongoing trash crisis, Berri said that the problem has become “a farce.” “This problem should not in any form continue to be the target of sectarian and provincial bickering and polarization,” he said.

Meanwhile, the latest developments in the nearly 4-month-old trash saga were discussed during a meeting between Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb. Salam also met with the three Kataeb ministers for the same purpose. The meetings came a day after Chehayeb’s plan was dealt a setback after Aley MP Talal Arslan announced that the people of the town of Shoueifat, south of Beirut, would refuse to host a landfill along the coast, by Costa Brava beach.

The rejection capped a fruitless eight-week search for a place to bury Beirut and Mount Lebanon’s waste, initiated on Sept. 9, when Chehayeb pushed his plan through the Cabinet. As well as Shoueifat, residents in the Bekaa Valley and then Nabatieh in the south have protested the building of landfills in their areas, thus putting Chehayeb’s plan on hold.

However, Chehayeb said he would persevere to find a solution to the trash crisis that has raised public health concerns after uncollected garbage was washed into Beirut’s street by heavy rains last week.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting at the Grand Serail, Information Minister Ramzi Joreige said the Kataeb ministers discussed with Salam the possibility of exporting the garbage as solution to the crisis. While the Kataeb ministers demanded a quick Cabinet session to deal with the trash crisis, Joreige said Salam voiced fears that if the session did not produce tangible results, this would be more frustrating for the people than if it did not meet.