In a video shared by the page El Haweyah, MP Paula Yacoubian defended the so-called “gap law” bill, presenting it as an indispensable reform and as an “achievement” of Nawaf Salam’s government in the context of a prospective agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to her, the bill would constitute the third legislative pillar required to restore confidence, enable Lebanon to return to international financial markets, and emerge from the crisis, regardless of the amounts that could be unlocked by the IMF.
The remarks were strongly contested by depositors, who accuse the MP of downplaying the scale of the financial deficit—estimated at nearly $80 billion—and of obscuring the concrete consequences of the bill. The “gap law” provides for loss-sharing mechanisms, including the conversion of a large portion of bank deposits into long-term bonds, with maturities of up to 15 or 20 years, accompanied by a partial write-off.
For her critics, Paula Yacoubian has thus adopted the lexicon of the IMF and the government, labeling as a “reform” a project perceived as a disguised seizure of deposits, while sidestepping the central issue of how responsibility should be shared between the state, the banks, and depositors.
This stance is seen as all the more objectionable given that, six years after the financial collapse, citizens have yet to feel any tangible impact of these reforms on their daily lives.
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