Al-Mustaqbal Seeks to End Any Excuse to Reject a Spending Draft-Law

Al-Mustaqbal MPs Jamal al-Jarrah and Ghazi Youssef will propose an urgent draft-law to parliament on Thursday in an attempt to find a comprehensive solution to the extra-budgetary spending made by different governments since 2006 and end any excuse to reject their proposal.

An Nahar daily said that the lawmakers will push for a parliamentary approval of the $22 billion spending made by the governments of ex-PMs Fouad Saniora and Saad Hariri and the current cabinet of Premier Najib Miqati.

Speaker Nabih Berri is seeking to find a solution to a dispute between the March 14 opposition, including al-Mustaqbal, and the March 8 forces ahead of a parliamentary session scheduled to be held on Monday.

He has proposed a parliamentary approval of a $5.9 billion bill on spending made by Miqati’s March 8-led cabinet in 2011 in return for seeking to legitimize the $11 billion spent by the governments of Saniora and Hariri between 2006 and 2009 and the $5 billion spending of Hariri’s national unity cabinet in 2010.

During the last session, March 14 and mainly al-Mustaqbal lawmakers stormed out of parliament to protest the proposal of the $5.9 billion bill, conditioning their approval of it to a settlement of the spending of the previous governments.

Al-Jarrah and Youssef attached to their proposal all the details that Berri had asked for to find out how the controversial $11 billion was spent, An Nahar said.

It quoted a parliamentary source as saying that the lawmakers accompanied the charts with the draft law “to end any justification to reject the proposal.”

Despite their proposal, March 14 parliamentary sources said the opposition MPs haven’t yet decided if they will participate in Monday’s session. The lawmakers might seek to boycott it if the urgent draft law is not placed on the agenda of the session.