Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri presides over a presidential election session on Oct. 24. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — The parliamentary session scheduled for Wednesday to discuss the thorny issue of corruption allegations in the telecommunications sector was postponed, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's office said in a statement on Tuesday.
The decision comes after many MPs, including the parliamentary blocs of Kataeb and the Lebanese Forces (LF), announced their intention to boycott the session.
In a statement, Berri's office said that the session was postponed after Parliament's Bureau "wished upon [Berri] to postpone it to clear the way for the participation of the majority of the General Assembly."
Earlier Tuesday, Lebanese Forces MPs Ghassan Hasbani and Elias Stephan announced that their party is boycotting the session.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Ghassan Hasbani justified the boycott by claiming all parliamentary sessions should be devoted to the election of a president.
For its part, the Kataeb party also announced in a statement on Tuesday that it would boycott the session, which it described it as "unconstitutional" without an elected president.
Kataeb also withdrew from a previous parliamentary session in early November that discussed a letter by former president Michel Aoun regarding the resignation of the caretaker government.
Parliament has convened eight times since September to elect Aoun's successor, without success. The next electoral session is scheduled for Thursday.