Hussein DakroubHasan Lakkis| The Daily Star
BEIRUT: A major political confrontation loomed over a contested Parliament session Wednesday to endorse urgent draft laws after the country’s main Christian parties stood firm on their rejection of the session, while Speaker Nabih Berri, backed by the Future Movement, Hezbollah and other Christian leaders, pledged to proceed with it.
Spearheading the Christian campaign against the exclusion of an electoral draft law from the agenda, MP Michel Aoun warned against holding the session without the three leading Christian parties, threatening to take “strong and firm” measures to stop it.
Aoun’s escalation against Berri’s decision to proceed with holding two legislative sessions Thursday and Friday to pass urgent draft laws coincided with intensified efforts aimed at heading off a major crisis that would plunge Lebanon, already reeling under the 17-month presidential vacuum and paralysis in Parliament and the government, into further political turmoil.
The Free Patriotic Movement leader said the upcoming legislative sessions to pass urgent bills, deemed vital for the state’s finances and loans, would run counter to the National Pact’s conditions on Muslim-Christian partnership in governance.
“This session, which they consider to be ‘legislative,’ is incomplete … Where are the National Pact’s requirements?” Aoun told a news conference after chairing a weekly meeting of his parliamentary Change and Reform bloc at his residence in Rabieh, north of Beirut. He was referring to the expected boycott of the session by the three leading Christian parties, the FPM, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party.
“We have discussed the issue with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and told him we are for passing urgent financial draft laws, but a session without the country’s major Christian parties amounts to destroying [the principles of] participation and democracy in the country,” Aoun said.
Responding to Berri’s refusal to include an electoral draft law on the session agenda due to the absence of consensus among the rival factions on a specific proposal, Aoun said priority should be given to this law.
“We tell them that an electoral law will be put on the agenda. No one can stop us from this. Seven years of procrastination over this law have passed, the same period the current Parliament has been in existence,” Aoun said. “Priority should be given to a new electoral law as stipulated in the Doha Accord.”
Noting that the issue of an electoral draft law has been on hold for seven years since the last parliamentary elections, he said: “We will take strong and firm measures which we will announce tomorrow. We will not allow the manipulation of the [electoral] law issue.”
Aoun did not say what these measures were, but sources said the FPM, the LF and the Kataeb Party would decide during a meeting to be held Tuesday night to declare a general strike in all Christian areas until Berri cancels the Parliament session.
Officials from the FPM and the LF have indicated that their MPs would not attend the sessions, mainly because an electoral draft law was not included on the agenda. The Kataeb Party has said that amid the presidential vacuum it will not attend any legislative session before the election of a president.
For his part, Berri hit back at Christian critics who accused him of disrespecting the National Pact’s prerequisites on partnership by insisting on holding a Parliament session without the main Christian parties. He said he is the one who created the principle of abiding by the National Pact’s conditions on partnership.
“As [LF chief] Dr. Samir Geagea said yesterday, I am the father of the National Pact’s requirements when it comes to one party being entirely absent from the session,” Berri said during a meeting with a delegation from the Press Federation at his Ain al-Tineh residence. “With regard to the session’s [conformity] with the National Pact, it is not Nabih Berri who abandons the National Pact’s requirements for the session.”
Signaling his readiness to accept an urgent electoral draft law for a later session, Berri said: “The agenda of [Thursday’s] session does not depart from what we called legislation of necessity. If there is any other proposal, it can be submitted in an urgent manner and we are obliged to include it.”Berri called on lawmakers to attend the session to pass essential financial draft laws and consequently, remove “international pressure” on Lebanon.
Prime Minister Tammam Salam voiced support for the Parliament sessions to approve draft laws as part of “legislation of necessity” during the presidential vacuum.
The parliamentary Future bloc called on lawmakers to attend Thursday’s session to endorse draft laws on the agenda. “The approval of these draft laws will spare Lebanon and the Lebanese a bitter cup,” the bloc said in a statement after its weekly meeting. “Approval of these laws comes in the context of legislation of necessity to preserve financial and monetary stability.”
Officials of the three Christian parties held further talks in a bid to unify their positions ahead of the legislative sessions.
LF media officer Melhem Riachi met with Aoun in Rabieh in the presence of FPM lawmaker MP Ibrahim Kanaan.
Later, Kanaan and Riachi met with Kataeb Party leader MP Sami Gemayel at the Kataeb headquarters in Saifi neighborhood, and reiterated their boycott of the sessions.
“Our visit is to declare our rejection of the exclusion of an electoral law from the legislative session,” Kanaan told reporters after the meeting.
“This matter cannot be sidestepped in this manner. Therefore, we are heading for more contacts to reject this situation … We are in a country of plurality and democracy.”
“We agreed that this session should not be held amid the rejection of three parties that represent the overwhelming majority of the Christians,” he added.
Marada Movement leader MP Sleiman Frangieh also held talks with Gemayel at the latter’s residence in Bikfaya.
After being interrupted by several power cuts, Frangieh said he will attend the legislative sessions despite the Kataeb’s boycott.
“I don’t see that including or not including a draft law on the session agenda is worth creating a rift, especially since there are 17 electoral draft laws on the table, and we are not in agreement on a single law,” Frangieh said.
