Hasan LakkisHussein Dakroub| The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Speaker Nabih Berri is determined to hold a legislative session soon to endorse a raft of urgent draft laws despite Parliament Secretariat’s failure Tuesday to include an electoral law proposal on the agenda, a contentious issue that could thwart the session.

Meanwhile, rival political leaders held a new round of national dialogue that was dominated by the enduring trash crisis, but remained sharply split over the characteristics of a new president, further prolonging the 17-month presidential impasse that has paralyzed Parliament legislation and crippled the government’s work.

Also, the leaders’ failure to reach a deal over landfills stipulated in a government plan to resolve the nearly 4-month-old trash crisis has dashed hopes for convening a much-needed Cabinet session to give the green line for the implementation of the plan.

Parliament’s Secretariat, which met under Berri in Parliament following the end of the dialogue session, agreed to add the public sector’s salary scale bill to the agenda of an upcoming legislative session, but failed to include an electoral draft law, a key demand of the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces.

“Parliament’s Secretariat continued studying proposed draft laws for the upcoming legislative session. We have agreed on an agenda containing about 40 urgent and ordinary proposals,” Deputy Parliament Speaker Farid Makari told reporters after the meeting.

He said that members of Parliament’s Secretariat also agreed unanimously to include two draft laws, including the wage hike bill for civil servants, on the agenda of the session that follows the upcoming legislative session.

No date has been set for a legislative session pending consultations between Berri and Prime Minister Tammam Salam.

Berri said the agenda of the planned legislative session, which includes 40 items, is final and will not be changed. He said he will set a date for a legislative session once its agenda has been printed and distributed to lawmakers.

Berri, according to visitors at his Ain al-Tineh residence, said there is no reason for the main Christian parties to boycott a legislative session.

“I have included for [MP Michel] Aoun two items on the agenda: A draft law that would grant foreigners [of Lebanese origin] Lebanese citizenship, and another item on which he insists: the transfer of cellular phone revenues to municipalities,” Berri was quoted as saying.

As to why an electoral law was excluded from the agenda, he said: “An electoral draft law was not included on the agenda of the legislative session because there is a large number of draft laws in this respect, while there is no consensus on a specific draft law.”

Berri described Tuesday’s dialogue session as “good,” saying the all-party talks were making slow progress toward breaking the presidential deadlock. “We have a finished evaluation of the president’s characteristics. The presidency issue will remain at the top of the agenda,” he said.

Makari said the postponement of the wage hike bill was because the first legislative session is intended to approve urgent draft laws, mostly linked to the state’s finances and loans, particularly the World Bank’s $600 million soft loans.

He added that a draft law that would grant foreigners of Lebanese origin Lebanese citizenship was put on the agenda during last week’s meeting of Parliament’s Secretariat.

“The electoral draft laws have not so far been put on the agenda,” Makari said, adding that if an agreement was reached on this issue, Parliament’s Secretariat would hold an emergency meeting to include it on the agenda.

An electoral law and the citizenship draft law are major demands of the FPM and the LF, which have linked their participation in any legislative session to adding these two draft laws to the agenda.The Kataeb Party has said it will not attend any legislative session before the election of a president.

Asked if Berri would convene a legislative session if it was boycotted by the FPM and LF lawmakers, Makari said: “For me, holding a [legislative] session in accordance with the National Pact [on Muslim-Christian partnership] is to serve the country rather than to obstruct it. It’s up to Speaker Berri to decide on it. But for me, if Speaker Berri called for a session, I would attend it, even if I were the only Christian to do so.”

However, the LF criticized the exclusion of an electoral law from the agenda of the upcoming legislative session.

“I couldn’t convince fellow lawmakers or Speaker Nabih Berri to include the election law on the agenda,” LF lawmaker Antoine Zahra, a member of Parliament’s Secretariat, told reporters after the meeting.

He said that in coordination between the LF and MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc, “I have voiced my rejection of an agenda that does not include an electoral law as an utmost necessity and priority.”

Asked if the LF lawmakers will attend a legislative session whose agenda does not include an electoral law, Zahra said: “When a date for a session is set with a final agenda, we will then officially announce our position on this issue.”

Meanwhile, rival leaders failed to make any breakthrough in the presidential deadlock during their ninth national dialogue session, prompting Berri to schedule a new session for Nov. 17.

As expected, Tuesday’s session was overshadowed by the ongoing trash crisis that is raising public health concerns after heavy rains swept mounds of uncollected garbage into Beirut’s streets last week.

Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb’s plan to solve the waste problem was dealt a setback Tuesday when officials from the Mount Lebanon district of Shoueifat rejected the creation of a landfill in the Costa Brava complex on the southern coastal road. “After three days of discussions with the town’s notables, officials and [political] parties, we decided to reject outright the establishment of a landfill in Costa Brava,” Aley MP Talal Arslan told a news conference after a meeting with Shoueifat’s notables.

As in last week’s dialogue session, Tuesday’s talks were boycotted by the Kataeb Party in protest at the government’s failure to solve the trash crisis. Aoun did not attend and was represented by a member of his bloc, MP Ibrahim Kanaan.