BEIRUT: Parliament will meet Tuesday with a secured quorum, not to choose a president or approve urgent draft laws, but rather to re-elect members of its Secretariat, and heads, members and rapporteurs of 16 parliamentary committees.
Speaker Nabih Berri has called for the meeting in line with the Constitution, which stipulates that Parliament convenes in a regular legislative session in the third week of October, which continues until the end of December, and in another legislative round that runs from the third week of March and until the end of May.
Tuesday’s meeting, which is expected to secure a legal quorum of half of the legislature’s 128 members plus one, or 65 MPs, comes a day before a Parliament session intended to elect a new president.
However, Wednesday’s session, the 30th since April last year, is doomed to fail like previous ones over a lack of quorum as the March 8 and March 14 parties remain split over who should succeed former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure ended May 25 last year.
In addition to re-electing members of its Secretariat and heads, members and rapporteurs of the 16 parliamentary committees, the session will seek to set the stage for the relaunching of legislative activity, stalled for more than a year by the 16-month presidential interregnum.
Parliamentary sources in the March 8 and March 14 camps confirmed the two sides would stick to the previous consensus on the distribution of shares in committees’ membership, ruling out any major change in the setup of committees.
While heads of parliamentary committees are expected to retain their posts, MP Abdel-Latif Zein, a member of Berri’s bloc, might be replaced by an MP from the Amal Movement as head of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee at his request.
However, the presidential crisis might be brought up as in previous sessions, when a lawmaker demanded that the session be used to elect a president with the presence of the required two-third majority for this purpose.
If the national dialogue sessions with rival leaders, scheduled Oct. 26, 27 and 28, reach an agreement on the reactivation of Parliament the Cabinet, Berri is expected to call the legislature’s Secretariat to meet to draft an agenda for the next legislative session which cannot convene without political consensus.
Meanwhile, no signs emerged that Prime Minister Tammam Salam would call for a Cabinet session this week to discuss the three-month-long trash crisis, amid expectations that the political escalation between the Future Movement and Hezbollah would throw the government into further disarray.
“The government will enter into a coma from which it will not wake up except to tackle the garbage issue,” Health Minister Wael Abu Faour told the Voice of Lebanon radio station. “So far, there have been no contacts that can save the government from the state of paralysis plaguing it.”
Information Minister Ramzi Joreige struck a downbeat note, saying that Salam might opt to resign if the obstruction of the Cabinet’s role persisted.
“Prime Minister Tammam Salam will not keep watching a crippled government. What is the use of the government staying in power if it cannot run the country’s affairs and does not do anything to serve the citizens?” Joreige asked in an interview with the Voice of Lebanon radio station.
“Premier Salam will take a decision, which will probably be difficult, if the obstruction of the government continues in the current manner. If the Cabinet is doomed not to meet at all, this means resignation,” he said.
The Cabinet has not met since Sept. 9 due to differences among ministers over the issues of military promotions and the government’s decision-making system.
The Cabinet crisis was further complicated when Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said last week that his two ministers would not return to the Cabinet until a new Army commander and a new military council are appointed. The Kataeb Party said the failure to convene the Cabinet would amount to bowing to the will of the parties boycotting the Cabinet sessions.
“Amid the deterioration of the economic situation, the aggravating garbage disaster, the crisis of school tuition fees, and the burden of the Syrian refugees, the obstruction of the Cabinet amounts to a crime against the Lebanese for which the boycotting party is responsible,” said a statement issued after a weekly meeting of the party’s Political Bureau chaired by party leader MP Sami Gemayel. “On the other hand, the failure to call for Cabinet sessions amounts to yielding to the will of the boycotters for which the prime minister bears responsibility toward the suffering Lebanese,” it added.
Tension soared to a high pitch Sunday between the Future Movement and Hezbollah after the latter’s leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said he didn’t care if the Future ministers resigned from the government or withdrew from national dialogue.
He was responding to Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk, who said in a speech Friday that the Future Movement would quit the government and withdrew from national dialogue if the FPM and Hezbollah continued to obstruct the Cabinet’s work.