FPM parliamentary bloc turns questions addressed to Cabinet into interpellations

BEIRUT — The "Strong Lebanon" parliamentary group, which is mainly composed of Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) MPs, has turned on Thursday several questions that it had addressed to the Cabinet, and for which the legal deadline for a response had passed, into interpellations per Article 126 of the parliament's internal regulations. The head of the FPM, Gebran Bassil, stated on Wednesday that the party had not received answers from the government to the MPs' questions.

On Wednesday, the Cabinet secured the Parliament's vote of confidence with 69 votes in support, nine votes against and four abstentions. This took place on the second day of parliamentary sessions on the general policy debate with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s Cabinet. The vote was requested by Bassil, who stated during the session that the FPM had not received answers to their questions, "neither in writing nor in the prime minister's speech today." The FPM is not represented in Salam's Cabinet.

According to the Parliament's internal regulations, "one or more MPs have the right to address oral or written questions to the government as a whole or to one of the ministers after exhausting the written questions on the agenda." If the questioner declares that he is satisfied with the answer, the discussion of the subject is concluded; otherwise, he has the right to turn it into an interpellation.

Regarding oral questions, the government may answer the question immediately or request to postpone the answer. As for written questions and interpellations, they shall be submitted through the Parliament Speaker, and the government shall respond to them in writing within 15 days at the latest from the date it received the question. For both questions and interpellations, the government can request that the Parliament's Bureau extend the period if the answer requires an investigation or information gathering that makes it impossible to provide the answer within the specified period.