On Friday morning, 16 ministers attended the first cabinet meeting of 2024, thus ensuring that quorum was met. 34 items were on the agenda, as well as ten others proposed by the Ministry of Environment and the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) to ensure the continuity of waste management.
At the end of the meeting, caretaker Minister of Information Ziad Makary announced that “3 laws relating to rents and schools were referred back to Parliament and that the issue of the appointment of a Chief of Staff had not been raised.”
He explained that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati was “awaiting the response of caretaker Minister of Defense Maurice Slim regarding the appointment of a new Chief of Staff.”
By way of reminder, the position of Chief of Staff has been vacant since the retirement of General Amine al-Orm on December 24, 2022. Two other seats on the six-member Military Council are due to be filled, those of Inspector General and Director General of Administration.
In reaction to the government’s referral to Parliament of the aforementioned laws, Georges Adwan, Chairman of the parliamentary Administration and Justice Committee, denounced the Cabinet’s move, deeming that the rejection law falls solely within the jurisdiction of the President of the Republic. Adwan wrote on his X platform, “The power given to the President of the Republic to refer laws to Parliament for reconsideration in accordance with Article 57 of the Constitution, derives from the oath under which he swears to protect the provisions of the Constitution.” Therefore, “this power must be used exclusively by the President of the Republic and, consequently, neither the Prime Minister nor the Cabinet has the right to reject laws that the Head of the Executive power is required to publish.”
On the issue of waste management, Makary confirmed that, of the ten items studied, “some have been approved, while others will be submitted for further study.”
Commenting on the issue of Lebanon’s potential offshore hydrocarbon reserves, the Minister indicated that “the necessary amendments had been made.” These amendments aim to reinstate clauses that appeared in contracts signed in 2018 with the consortium led by France’s TotalEnergies to explore Blocks 4 and 9 of the Lebanese Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). These clauses had been removed from the agreements in 2019, when the second round of bidding for several other blocks within the EEZ was launched.
Before the start of the session, Mikati expressed the need to implement all international resolutions, denouncing Israeli aggression and its violation of these resolutions. He also raised the issue of financial incentives and Sunday’s incident at Beirut International Airport.
