BEIRUT: Parliament, meeting for the first time in more than a year, approved a raft of draft laws Thursday, including a law allowing foreigners of Lebanese origin to get citizenship, a food safety law and a bill bolstering the Army’s infrastructure.
Parliament convened in a morning session attended by 100 lawmakers to discuss and endorse 42 urgent draft laws on its agenda, including the World Bank’s $600 million in soft loans. Loans from the World Bank and aid from international donors are expected to be passed during Friday’s session.
Lawmakers passed in two sessions 23 draft laws, the most important of which is the citizenship bill, a major demand of the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces.
However, the evening session was marred by news of twin suicide explosions that killed at least 43 people and wounded nearly 200 in the southern Beirut suburb of Burj al-Barajneh, prompting Speaker Nabih Berri to adjourn the session to Friday.
“I am compelled to adjourn the session to 1 p.m. Friday because the terrorists want to disrupt the country, but we will not allow them to do so,” Berri said after lawmakers endorsed the citizenship draft law. He asked the MPs to observe a one-minute silence for the souls of the victims of the two blasts. Friday’s session was later pushed to 5 p.m. to allow MPs to take part in funeral of victims who fell in the explosions.
In the evening session, Parliament passed a draft law authorizing the government to sign contracts to buy urgent equipment for the Lebanese Army and boost its infrastructure in line with the formula agreed upon during a meeting between Defense Minister Samir Moqbel, Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil, MP Ibrahim Kanaan from the FPM, and MP Samir Jisr from the Future Movement.
At Berri’s request, lawmakers voted to pass an urgent bill to allocate more funds to the public budget after slashing the proposed amount of LL5,417 billion to LL4,500 billion to cover shortfalls in the projected allocations of the 2016 draft state budget.
Another urgent bill to earmark additional funds to the public budget, estimated at LL861 billion, which will cover a deficit in civil servants’ salaries and wages and its annexes was approved.
The country’s three main Christian parties have threatened to boycott the Parliament session because its agenda excluded an electoral draft law. But a last-minute agreement reached Wednesday following a flurry of contacts that involved Berri, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, LF chief Samir Geagea, FPM leader MP Michel Aoun and other figures cleared the way for the participation of FPM and LF lawmakers in the session.
Read more here.