BEIRUT: The March 14 coalition lawmakers’ decision to attend this week’s legislative session to discuss the controversial public sector wage hike hinges on a prior agreement on the draft law, Future MP Ghazi Youssef said.
The failure to pass the bill would likely affect the fate of official exams, which public school teachers vowed to boycott unless their demands were met.
“We are consulting with our March 14 coalition parties on whether to attend but if there is no prior agreement on the salary scale's numbers, March 14 MPs might not attend Tuesday's session,” Youssef told Al-Mustaqbal daily in remarks published Saturday.
He noted that the session would be merely used for “political outbidding” and would be fruitless if lawmakers failed to agree beforehand on the draft law.
Lawmakers are in dispute over means to finance the wage hike, expected to cost the treasury some $1.6 billion annually, including raising the rate of VAT from 10 to 11 percent as well as proposed taxes on illegal seafront properties.
Youssef blamed Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil for the failure to reach consensus on the numbers, saying the minister refused to attend meetings of a parliamentary subcommittee tasked with studying the bill.
“We have asked him on several occasions to attend but he refused, so there are no new developments,” he said.
Lawmakers from major Christian parties boycotted a May 27 Parliament session intended to discuss the salary scale bill in protest at the failure to elect a new president.
The Union Coordination Committee plans to hold a general strike on June 9 and June 10, as well as a series of protests and a boycott of official exams starting June 12 to press Parliament to approve the salary scale bill. The UCC represents civil servants, and public and private school teachers.
Nevertheless, Education Minister Elias Bou Saab said he would use all means available to hold the official exams, urging the country’s various political blocs to shoulder their responsibility and attend Tuesday’s session.
Earlier this week, Bou Saab announced that Brevet exams would be postponed from June 7 to June 12, while Baccalaureate exams would be postponed from June 12 to June 16, and from June 22 to June 27.
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