BEIRUT: Parliament is set to approve the public sector’s long-awaited salary scale bill during its legislative session Wednesday, former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Monday.
“I expect the wage hike draft law for the public sector to be approved during Wednesday’s session,” Siniora told The Daily Star.
The head of the Future bloc described the latest formula over the controversial salary raise for civil servants and public school teachers, which was reached following intensive talks among the country’s major blocs in the past few days, as the “best possible arrangement.”
Siniora said he and Future MPs would attend the Parliament session which Speaker Nabih Berri called for Wednesday to discuss and endorse the wage hike bill.
He had met with Berri over the weekend to put the final touches to the wage hike draft law. According to sources close to Berri, Siniora voiced his support for the salary raise formula agreed upon earlier by Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil and Lebanese Forces MP George Adwan during several earlier rounds of talks.
Khalil, from Berri’s bloc, had also met several times with Nader Hariri, chief of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s office, to remove obstacles blocking the approval of the bill.
Siniora’s remarks came shortly after Berri chaired a meeting of Parliament’s Secretariat to prepare the agenda for Wednesday’s session.
In addition to the salary scale bill, the session will study draft laws pertaining to loan agreements between Lebanon and foreign banks, while discussion of Eurobonds and the 2014 draft state budget has been postponed to other sessions.
“We hope to approve during this session the ranks and salary scale within the criteria to balance revenues and expenses,” MP Marwan Hamadeh told reporters after the meeting held at Berri’s Ain al-Tineh residence.
Referring to the deal reached by rival blocs over the wage hike bill, he said: “Signs of broad understanding have emerged in the past few days.”
Hamadeh said the session would only be touching on “urgent” and “necessary” draft laws, which included approving a plan to receive six loans for crucial projects. He added that the meeting of Parliament’s Secretariat did not discuss the issue of extending Parliament’s term, which expires Nov. 20.
Adwan, the LF MP, said the wage hike bill was on its way to Parliament’s General Assembly, adding he was contacting MPs from other blocs to seek their support for the bill. “We have two days left during which we will try to muster the broadest support for the salary scale [draft law] from all the parties in order to approve it as we have promised the people,” he said.
The passing of the salary scale bill has been stymied by differences between the March 8 and March 14 blocs over proposed taxes to fund the increases.
The agreement by Berri’s Development and Liberation bloc to raise the VAT from 10 to 11 percent, as demanded by the Future Movement, has cleared the way for the bill’s approval.
The bloc, which met under Berri Monday, said in a statement it agreed to the endorsement of the salary scale bill according to the amendments agreed upon by various blocs.
The four-month-old presidential deadlock has paralyzed legislation in Parliament, which has been unable to meet over a lack of quorum to choose a successor to former President Michel Sleiman. March 14 lawmakers have refused to attend legislative sessions in the absence of a president, arguing that Parliament should only convene to discuss urgent matters.
The Kataeb Party has said its lawmakers will boycott any legislative session so long as the presidency seat remains vacant.
This stance was reaffirmed during the party’s weekly meeting chaired by party leader and former President Amine Gemayel Monday. The party reiterated that priority should be given to the election of a president.
“Legislation of necessary [draft laws] is merely a suspicious gateway to get used to the presidential vacuum, thus turning the presidency into a marginal position that can be dispensed with,” the party said in a statement. It called for combined efforts by the factions to regulate the work of constitutional institutions, beginning with the election of a president as soon as possible.