Geagea: Financial Laws Will Be Adopted, We Refuse to Be Used as Scapegoats over Legislative Session
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea rejected on Monday the criticism directed against the party regarding its position on the upcoming legislative session, wondering how financial draft-laws are priority over the parliamentary electoral draft-law.
He said during a press conference: “The financial draft-laws will be approved in due time.”
He added that a deadline for adopting these laws is in December and “they will be approved.”
There have been growing concerns in recent weeks that Lebanon will lose international grants and loans over its ongoing failure to ratify laws linked to them.
Addressing these fears, Geagea remarked: “Some of these laws have been postponed since 2012 and the world did not end then.”
Some of these laws had also been devised since 2001 and they were aborted by the same sides that are demanding their ratification today, he noted.
“We refuse to be used as scapegoats over the legislative session,” he said in anticipation of accusations that the LF will be held responsible for the failure of the meeting.
Furthermore, he defended the LF and Free Patriotic Movement's demands for the adoption of the draft-law on restoring the nationality of expatriates.
He asked: “How is it that we value the funds provided by these expatriates and yet we deny them the right to obtain their Lebanese nationality?”
The purpose of the draft-law on restoring the nationality of expatriates is aimed at establishing an authority that would allow them to do so given the presidential vacuum and paralysis at state institutions, explained Geagea.
On the electoral draft-law, he stressed that the parliamentary elections are due in just over a year.
“When would it be appropriate to address the draft-law if not now?” he wondered.
He stressed that the LF, Mustaqbal Movement, and Progressive Socialist Party leader had reached an agreement over an electoral law, but it was met with rejection.
“We demand the adoption of a new law to save the Taef accord,” he declared.
Political parties' failure to approve an electoral law despite months of debate in 2013 resulted in lawmakers extending their own term.
A similar dispute, coupled with other differences, resulted in parliament extending its term again in November 2014.
The next parliamentary elections are set for 2017.
Commenting on the attendance of independent Christian lawmakers of the legislative session, Geagea said: “These MPs are not representatives of the absentee parties.”
Speaker Nabih Berri had told As Safir newspaper on Monday that the attendance of Christian lawmakers not affiliated with the LF, FPM, and Kataeb would render the meeting legitimate.
The lack of any Christian MPs however would result in lack of quorum at the session, he explained.
The legislative session is scheduled for November 12 and 13 amid the boycott of the Kataeb Party over the ongoing presidential vacuum.
The LF and FPM are likely to boycott the meeting over the failure to include the parliamentary electoral law on its agenda.
M.T.
D.A.
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