Speaker of the House Nabih Berri has called for a legislative session to discuss projects and proposed laws completed by the committees next Thursday. This invitation followed a meeting of the Bureau of the House of Representatives at the second presidential office in Ain al-Tineh, where Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab noted that "there are 16 items from projects and proposed laws completed by the parliamentary committees, in addition to several urgent and repeated proposals that will be integrated, totaling around 105 urgent duplicate laws on the agenda of the legislative session."
"New Lebanon" has learned that the projects and proposals on the session's agenda include several loan projects with the World Bank and international and donor institutions in various sectors related to health, education, and others, in addition to the retirement and social protection project, as well as an amendment concerning women's insurance. However, the most notable item will be the proposed law on the independence of the judiciary, which was returned to the Administration and Justice Committee that has re-examined it and prepared a report on the outstanding points that were not agreed upon, particularly the mechanism for electing the Supreme Judicial Council, as well as the capital control law that was on the agenda of the last session and was postponed citing its necessity to be linked to the recovery and restructuring plan for banks, which have not yet been completed by the government.
According to information, these two important topics are likely to be postponed again for the same previous reasons, while the highlight of the session will, as is known, be the urgent repeated proposals related to extending the term of the army commander and some other security leaders.
In this context, it falls to President Berri to place the repeated urgent proposals on the agenda, which may exceed a hundred due to the paralysis of the council's meetings and legislative sessions, but he will only choose the most pressing and significant proposals for extension, which will according to previous commitments be prioritized on the urgent duplicate agenda.
According to relevant parliamentary sources, there are six proposals related to the extension topic that could be consolidated into a unified form in coordination with the blocs and MPs who submitted them, or it may be done during the session when the discussion reaches this file. Sources say that there is still hope that the government will find a solution or exit the issue of extending the army commander, even in the last fifteen minutes before the parliamentary session, otherwise, the council will carry out its role but within a careful study that does not make the law subject to challenge before the Constitutional Council.
Additionally, some projects and proposals that will be reviewed by the joint parliamentary committees today could be added to the session's agenda, particularly the World Bank loan to finance the social safety net worth $300 million and the special assistance for the education sector amounting to 650 billion Lebanese pounds.
Naturally, all eyes will be on the positions of the blocs and their participation in the session, especially the "Free Patriotic Movement," which is likely to boycott the session, as well as the position of "Hezbollah," which has so far considered its ally MP Gibran Bassil in the issue of not securing a quorum for the government, but it will not boycott the House session regardless of its position during the vote on the extension proposal, and there are also positions from other blocs and independent or reformist MPs that remain unclear.
