Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab, April 12, 2023. (Credit: Hussam Shbaro)
BEIRUT — "It has become nearly impossible" for Lebanon to hold upcoming municipal elections scheduled to start May 7, Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab said Wednesday at a joint Parliament committees meeting.
Bou Saab pointed the blame at Najib Mikati's caretaker cabinet, which he said "did nothing" to ensure financing for the elections.
His statement comes a week after caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi nevertheless announced that the municipal elections "will be held on time" starting on May 7.
'Blaming each other'
"It has become nearly impossible to hold municipal elections," Bou Saab said Wednesday. "We have less than a month before the first election deadline, some deadlines for filing applications have already been exceeded and there are still no candidates." He added that caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi and caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil were absent from Wednesday's meeting.
Bou Saab added that the Mawlawi "did not warn" that he would be absent from the meeting. Mawlawi participated Wednesday morning in a meeting at the Grand Serail with the caretaker prime minister.
"The real and effective role in allocating funds lies with the government: they have ... done nothing," Bou Saab said, repeating this point several times.
Four months after Mawlawi's decision to hold the municipal elections, "the funds have not been collected," he criticized.
He said he would present a draft law on extending the current mandate of Lebanon's municipalities for four months. "I am ready to bear this responsibility personally," added. Bou Saab, who is close to the Free Patriotic Movement led by MP Gebran Bassil, said he would "talk to Bassil about this bill, to carry it on behalf of the parliamentary group and I will present it to [speaker of Parliament] Nabih Berri."
Other MPs also focused their criticism on Mikati. After Wednesday's meeting, FPM MP Alain Aoun (Baabda) also put the "responsibility" on the government. "We will participate in a legislative session dedicated to the extension of the mandate of the municipalities," he said to local TV outlets.
On the side of the Lebanese Forces, MP Georges Adwan (Chouf) blamed the government "for the cancellation of the municipal elections and all that resulted from it."
"We will not sit in any legislative plenary session until a president is elected," Adwan said.
"Everything we've been trying to do for the last four months has been promised by the government. It was all fake, they didn't do anything serious to ensure that the elections would be held," he added.
Politicians are split over the issue of funding the elections. Some parties such as the LF and the Kataeb want the government to disburse a share of the special drawing rights granted by the International Monetary Fund to finance the race.
This is what the leader of the Kataeb, Samy Gemayel, demanded during a session of the joint parliamentary committees held at the end of March. This demand provoked a terse reaction from Amal Movement MP Ali Hassan Khalil (Marjayoun-Hasbaya).
Other disagreements occurred during the session, which did not lead to any decision on the subject. Khalil is the author of a bill on a supplementary appropriation in the 2022 budget, amounting to LL1,500 billion, which would cover the expenses of organizing municipal elections.
