Report: Hizbullah Mediating with FPM to Prevent Division of Majority over Power Crisis
Hizbullah has mediated with the Free Patriotic Movement to prevent an escalation in the dispute over the electricity draft law proposed by FPM chief Michel Aoun, March 8 sources have told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.
The dispute began when Aoun threatened to pull his ministers from the cabinet after opposition MPs and lawmakers allied with him rejected the draft law that allows Energy Minister Jebran Bassil, who is Aoun’s son-in-law, to spend $1.2 billion on building power plants without referring to the cabinet.
The sources told al-Hayat that Hizbullah ministers Mohammed Fneish and Hussein al-Hajj Hassan urged Bassil not to leave the last cabinet session which witnessed a debate on the electricity crisis.
During the session, Bassil insisted for the cabinet to approve Aoun’s proposal but several other ministers, including those representing Walid Jumblat, called for legal restraints in the spending of the $1.2 billion.
Labor Minister Charbel Nahhas, who like Bassil represents the FPM in the cabinet, urged the ministers to approve the project but Jumblat’s ministers Alaeddine Terro and Ghazi Aridi criticized him.
“This is not the first time that a disagreement between allied forces takes place,” Aridi insisted, according to al-Hayat’s sources.
“This is not something new in the political life. We all want to solve the electricity crisis,” he said.
At this stage, President Michel Suleiman intervened saying that although the cabinet was made up of a single team, Bassil should allow for some give-and-take.
The sources said that Hizbullah representatives met with Bassil on Friday and criticized him, saying his stance was creating a gap among the parliamentary majority forces.
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