Parliament Approves Electricity Draft Law Despite Aoun’s Reservations
Parliament endorsed on Thursday an electricity draft law that was approved a day earlier by the joint parliamentary committees based on a proposal made by Speaker Nabih Berri and rejected by MP Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc.
Aoun expressed reservations on the bill during the session. He had met with Berri ahead of the legislature’s meeting.
Later in the day, Berri adjourned the session for lack of quorum.
Contacts made overnight with Aoun had failed to convince him of the settlement reached at the committees meeting on Wednesday to adopt the cabinet’s $1.2 billion electricity proposal with a few amendments.
Aoun insisted that the draft law approved during the meeting contradicted with the initial energy bill endorsed by the cabinet on Sept. 7 which stated that Energy Minister Jebran Bassil should form the Electricity Regulatory Authority within three months and Electricite du Liban’s board of directors within two months.
During the meeting of the committees, lawmakers approved the proposal made by Berri to make two amendments to the government’s electricity project, forcing Bassil to begin forming the regulatory authority and the board of directors as soon as parliament endorses the bill on Thursday.
High-ranking FPM sources also told As Safir daily that the referral of the cabinet’s decision to the parliamentary session as a draft law is a violation of the separation of powers.
But parliamentary sources stressed that Berri’s proposal was aimed at appeasing both Aoun’s camp and the March 14-led opposition which had been insisting on introducing to the draft law proposed to parliament some articles approved by the cabinet.
The sources said that the agreement met some of the opposition’s demands and at the same time didn’t allow Aoun and his team to make major compromises.
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