Can parliament legislate? Berri warns of constitution 'misinterpretation'

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that Parliament can legislate, even though Lebanon has been without a president for more than eight months.

After 12 attempts to elect a president failed amid major political disputes, opposition MPs decided to boycott all parliamentary sessions, as they considered them "unconstitutional" amid a presidential void.

The Free Patriotic movement also says that parliament can only convene for urgent matters, and its MPs did not attend a session that was supposed to discuss several laws including the capital control law and the oil and gas sovereign fund draft law earlier this month.

The constitution stipulates that parliament can meet only in extraordinary sessions until a president is elected and a new cabinet is formed.

"Nothing justifies the disruption of the legislative role of Parliament," Berri told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Monday. "These are pretexts and are based on an unrealistic interpretation of the constitution."

Berri denied that parliament has turned into an elective body that cannot legislate. "The constitution does not cancel or suspend The legislative role of Parliament. The text is very clear, Parliament becomes an elective body exclusively during the election sessions," he said. "There is no such thing as necessity legislation."

In 2016, before the election of former President Michel Aoun, Parliament passed more than seventy laws amid a two-and-a-half years of presidential void following the end of former president Michel Suleiman’s term in office.

In June, lawmakers failed for the 12th time to elect a new president, and quorum was lost before the second round of voting.

Berri has not called for a presidential election session since. He says he will only call for a session when parties agree on a president, otherwise it would fail like all the previous ones.

French special presidential envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian is set to arrive in Lebanon in September to resume a French initiative to push for a solution to the presidential impasse.

He had proposed on his last visit to invite all those taking part in the process of electing a president to a meeting in September to achieve a consensus on the challenges and on the priority projects the future president will have to carry out, and consequently the qualities necessary for tackling them.

Thirty one opposition MPs said in a joint statement that "any dialogue with Hezbollah would be futile" and that dialogue should only be held after a president is elected, while former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said that there is no alternative to sitting with Hezbollah.