In response to statements made by Deputy Gibran Bassil, Deputy Ali Hassan Khalil issued the following statement: Bassil has inflated his perception and fancied that there are negotiations regarding terms. He has gone on repeating the same refrain that the Lebanese have become accustomed to in order to escape from his responsibilities. We, with all pride, nominated as the bloc of President Nabih Berri for the presidency of the council, and we did not negotiate or ask anyone, certainly not Bassil, to exchange votes for any position. We take pride in the parliamentary leadership experience that placed this authority and its role in its true position, cooperating with the authorities as stipulated in the constitution.
As for the conditions he tries to impose, that matter is returned to him as he attempts to persuade the Lebanese that we are the ones who obstructed the forensic audit, which President Berri had the honor of working on to pass four laws related to it and to lift banking secrecy. His team has repeatedly obstructed the approval of the capital control law and halted judicial appointments and has not implemented any anti-corruption laws, among many other issues that have plunged the country into the predicament we are living in. As for the development of the system and decentralization, everyone heard President Berri’s firm stance last Tuesday. Let the people answer what the conditions and demands from him regarding accountability for electricity, telecommunications, dams, and their deals are.
President Berri is not accustomed to negotiating anything from under the table, as he honors these positions, and he has never accepted anyone imposing conditions on him that are far greater than what is being proposed. Our commitment to the people alongside President Berri remains in working seriously to extricate the country from the depths of the crises that your term as the second president of the republic has bequeathed us, leading it to the depths it is in today. Despite all this, and far from the methods of deals, we have always extended our hand to everyone we meet and disagree with, and we rely on a genuine partnership with all sincere parties, believing that we are before an opportunity to organize our differences and expand our common ground to save our country from its problems.
