Not enough Lebanese MPs to vote on urgent aid for country’s poorest

Three-day session cut short after many MPs did not attend afternoon session on Wednesday

Lebanon's parliament convened at the Unesco Palace in Beirut to allow members to maintain social distancing. Reuters

Lebanon's parliament adjourned without voting on a much-needed economic support package worth nearly $800 million after not enough members showed up for the afternoon session on Wednesday.

Over two days, legislators passed a bill regulating chiropractic practice, legalised cannabis for medical and industrial use, officially changed the term "handicapped" to "people with special needs", voted down a law to financially support people who lost their jobs because of confinement measures, and rejected lifting banking secrecy.

The atmosphere in the chamber became tense as MPs quarrelled over holding early elections and fighting corruption, two key demands of anti-government protesters who drove around Beirut in convoys to express their anger with their political leadership.

By Wednesday afternoon, most legislators had left the vast Unesco Palace where they were meeting instead of parliament so that they could maintain social distancing measures. Quorum was lost and Parliament speaker Nabih Berri ended the session that was meant to last three days.

As a result, MPs did not vote on an aid package of 1.2 trillion Lebanese pounds that Defence Minister Zeina Akar said was intended to support Lebanon’s long-suffering private sector as well as the country’s poorest families.

The aid amount is equivalent to $790 million (Dh2.9bn) at the official exchange rate, though a cash crunch has caused the value of the local currency to lose over half its value in the past months on the parallel market.

The World Bank has warned that up to 50 per cent of the Lebanese could soon live under the poverty line as the economic crisis deepens.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab asked Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to hold a session on Wednesday evening to study the aid bill, but Mr Berri refused, reported local daily L'Orient-Le Jour.

“Nobody tells me what to do, Parliament is sovereign,” Mr Berri told Mr Diab.

The defence minister said on Tuesday that she had worked with Mr Diab and fellow ministers “to prepare a stimulus and social security plan” for parliament's approval.

“I hope that they will defy the saying that people have no rights without their political leaders and that they do not want us to succeed, neither for our people or our rescue,” Mrs Akar wrote on Twitter.

Mrs Akar said 485bn pounds were earmarked for zero-interest loans to SMEs, industrial companies, vocational workers and farmers. Another 640bn pounds was allocated for assistance to poor families.

Votes on several sensitive issues were deferred by referring the proposals to parliamentary committees, including holding early elections and allowing judges to file legal proceedings against presidents and ministers.

Lebanese parties all agree that political corruption is one of the main causes for the current financial crisis but no high-level politician has been imprisoned for corruption since the end of the civil war in 1990.

“We are in the biggest financial and monetary crisis that Lebanon has ever seen and MPs only care about themselves," said Fouad Debs, a lawyer and protester. "They continue accumulating wealth instead of helping people who are really suffering.

"There is no concept of social justice or accountability.”