Parliament budget session postponed due to lack of quorum

BEIRUT — A Parliament session on Wednesday, during which Lebanese delegates had planned to discuss the long overdue 2022 draft budget, was postponed to Thursday morning due to a lack of quorum.

Parliament Secretary-General Adnan Daher announced around 11:30 a.m. that the session would instead take place on Thursday at 10 a.m.

The Lebanese Forces and Kataeb announced on Monday that they would not attend the session on Wednesday as it coincides with the 40th anniversary of former Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel's assassination. Free Patriotic Movement MPs also boycotted the meeting. 

Following the postponement decision, Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab, whoa member of the FPM, said in a press briefing that though he is against boycotting Parliament sessions, he believes "that this day is meaningful to many Lebanese," adding that he had told Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri "that this subject needs to be dealt with."

FPM founder Michel Aoun and his camp are at odds with Nabih Berri and his party,  the Amal Movement. 

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Dozens of people had gathered in downtown Beirut ahead of Wednesday's planned Parliament session, denouncing a draft budget that they think will worsen their already deteriorating financial conditions. 

Wednesday's planned session was part of a three-day assembly aimed at discussing the 2022 draft budget. Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee finished its review and forwarded the draft budget to the full parliamentary assembly in late August, despite committee members not reaching a consensus on all issues. 

If the text is adopted at the end of the plenary session this week, it will nevertheless be months behind the deadlines set out in the constitution, under which the budget should have been passed by parliament by the end of January 2022. Lebanon's adoption of an annual budget is one of the reforms expected by the International Monetary Fund to release a multi-billion-dollar financial assistance package as the country sinks into a full economic collapse that began in 2019.