Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — The Parliament's Bureau met Tuesday but decided to postpone its discussions on setting a future legislative session to an unspecified date, announced Deputy Speaker of Parliament Elias Bou Saab in a statement published by the state-run National News Agency.
Bureau meetings are usually set to discuss the agendas of future legislative sessions, but the organization of such legislative sessions has become controversial. Some MPs and political parties consider them unconstitutional since legally, the Parliament is supposed to meet only to elect a new president.
After the meeting, Bou Saab said that all the members of the Bureau agreed on the right of Parliament to legislate "as it was the case in previous years."
"However, it was agreed by the joint parliamentary committees that the Capital control law has to be approved with other laws [that have not yet been approved at committee level] and that's why we decided to postpone the Bureau's meeting to an unspecified date," he added.
The Parliament Bureau's meeting was presided by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and attended by Bou Saab, the two parliament secretaries Alain Aoun and Hadi Abul-Hassan, bureau members Hagop Pakradounian, Abdel-Karim Kabbara and Michel Moussa, as well as Parliament Secretary General Adnan Daher.
The potential upcoming legislative sessions were 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 late January.
In a joint statement, more than a third of parliamentarians announced a boycott of legislative sessions until the presidential vacuum, which has been in effect since Nov. 1, comes to an end. In addition to these MPs, Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil reiterated over the weekend that his party would also refuse to participate in such a meeting.
In January, the 11th attempt to name a new head of state failed. No sessions have been scheduled since.