Jumblat’s Sources: We Are Not Tools
The Progressive Socialist Party will not become a follower and refuses to allow Energy Minister Jebran Bassil to spend $1.2 billion to build power plants without the control of a technical committee, PSP sources said.
The sources of PSP leader Walid Jumblat told the Saudi al-Riyadh daily in remarks published Friday that all it is asking from Bassil is to form a committee to supervise under the leadership of the minister the spending of the money.
The cabinet is deadlocked over the electricity draft law which was proposed to parliament by Bassil’s father-in-law Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun.
The draft law calls for the allocation of $1.2 billion to the energy ministry to build power plants to supply 700 additional megawatts for the country.
Even if the plan was approved by the cabinet during its session on Sept. 7, it will be blocked in parliament, the sources warned.
“We don’t accept to be shackled inside the cabinet. We have participated in it to salvage Lebanon from a war that would have erupted hadn’t Jumblat taken his stance,” they said.
The PSP ministers told the cabinet during its 10-minute session that it held on Wednesday that they neither follow the March 14-led opposition nor the March 8 forces that make up the parliamentary majority, the sources told al-Riyadh.
“We won’t be a tool in anybody’s hands,” they said.
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