The members of the Parliament Bureau at Ain al-Tineh, on Feb. 13, 2023. (Credit: Hassan Ibrahim/Lebanese Parliament)
BEIRUT — Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday presided over a Parliament Bureau meeting scheduled to discuss the agenda of an upcoming legislative session, after more than a third of parliamentarians on Saturday announced a boycott of any legislative session until the presidential vacuum, in effect since Nov. 1, is filled.
The meeting on Monday was attended by Parliament secretaries Alain Aoun and Hadi Abul-Hassan, and bureau members Hagop Pakradounian, Abdel-Karim Kabbara and Michel Moussa, as well as Parliament Secretary-General Adnan Daher, who said in a statement that "the Bureau held its session and decided to complete its discussions in another session next Monday" at 2 p.m.
Daher did not provide further information on any decisions reached by the Parliament Bureau.
Bureau meetings are usually set to discuss the agenda of future legislative sessions. The organization of such a meeting at the present time is, however, controversial.
In a statement published Saturday, a total of 46 MPs, including independent, Forces of Change, Kataeb and Lebanese Forces MPs, announced their intention to boycott any legislative session held before a new president is elected, citing Article 75 of the Lebanese Constitution and claiming that under the current circumstances Parliament acts as “an electoral body and not a legislative assembly.”
In addition to these MPs, the head of the Free Patriotic Movement Gebran Bassil also alluded to a boycott of the legislative session in a video published on Saturday in which he said that "those who claim to be concerned about the early election of a head of state should oppose both the meetings of the cabinet and the legislative sessions [held during a presidential vacuum] and accept only meetings devoted to what is necessary and urgent."
Upcoming legislative sessions are expected to include discussions of a draft law on capital control — the passing of which is among the demands made by the International Monetary Fund to unlock a multibillion dollar aid package and by commercial banks, which have informally limited depositors’ access to their funds since 2019, to end an open-ended strike launched last Tuesday.
Another presidential election session has yet to be scheduled after an inconclusive 11th attempt to name a new head of state in January.
The EU, Norway and Switzerland in a joint statement on Friday issued the most recent of repeated calls from the international community urging the election of a president. MPs refusing to attend non-electoral sessions last December postponed a Parliament session discussing allegations of corruption in the telecoms sector.