{"id":1075,"date":"2021-02-19T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T13:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2023-07-07T07:05:01","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T07:05:01","slug":"article-lebanons-parliament-during-a-year-of-collapses-and-crises-lack-of-vision-populism-inertia-and-buying-time-for-a-crumbling-house-of-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/article-lebanons-parliament-during-a-year-of-collapses-and-crises-lack-of-vision-populism-inertia-and-buying-time-for-a-crumbling-house-of-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Lebanon\u2019s Parliament During a Year of Collapses and Crises: Lack of Vision, Populism, Inertia, and Buying Time for a Crumbling House of Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

Legislative Lethargy and Low Productivity<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

The Parliament held 8 sessions during the period between October 17th, 2019 and the end of 2020. The four legislative sessions included 172 different topics1<\/sup><\/sub>. Urgent and repeated proposed laws represented 86% of the proposals on the Parliament’s agenda, i.e. the proposals that directly reach the General Assembly, without being studied by the Parliamentary Committees. Moreover, 83% of law proposals were submitted by an individual Member of Parliament (MP) or by only one bloc, knowing that 23% of them were presented by individual and independent MPs not affiliated with any parliamentary bloc. On the other hand, only 8.4% were submitted by two blocs2<\/sup>, and only 5% were proposed by three or more parliamentary blocs3<\/sup>.

These figures indicate two things: First, despite the major crises affecting Lebanon, and the pressing need for a visionary and effective legislative initiative to navigate them, the majority of proposals have been in the form of “urgent legislation” and perhaps populism. Second, we have noticed that the majority of the proposals did not involve any discussion or cooperation between the blocs, while half of the proposals have not even been discussed within the parliamentary bloc itself, adding to indicators that they are not seriously addressing Lebanon\u2019s woes.

In the last three legislative sessions[4], the Parliament’s average productivity did not exceed 40% of the agenda set for each session. The Parliament examined only 30% of the proposals in May’s session<\/a>, 32.5% in September\u2019s session<\/a>5<\/sup>, and 57% of them in December’s session<\/a>6<\/sup>. In the last session, it adopted a deceptive strategy by including “reform” proposals in the agenda, but it turned out that there was prior preparation<\/a> to adjourn the session before completing discussion of the entire schedule.<\/p>\n\n

Eclipsing Vital Laws and Watering Down Reforms<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

The outcome of these sessions was as follows:<\/p>\n\n