BEIRUT: Speaker Nabih Berri called Wednesday on joint parliamentary committees to meet next Monday to review the public sector’s controversial salary scale bill as the Union Coordination Committee threatened to stage an open-ended strike if the bill was not passed soon.
Meanwhile, a Parliament session which Berri called for Thursday to elect a new president appears to be doomed to fail like previous ones over a lack of quorum, raising fears of a prolonged vacuum in the country’s top Christian post.
Thursday’s would be the 13th session to be foiled by a lack of quorum in the past five months to choose a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure ended on May 25.
Prime Minister Tammam Salam again called for a quick election of a president. “Without a president, the Lebanese entity will be exposed to several crises. We cannot be protected from these crises except with the election of a president, especially since he is the only Christian Arab president in the Levant,” Salam said during a meeting with a delegation from “The Committee to Defend the Rights of Beirut.”
The joint committees’ meeting will study the inclusion of military personnel and private school teachers into the wage hike bill, Berri was quoted by lawmakers as saying during the speaker’s weekly meeting with MPs at his Ain al-Tineh residence.
Parliament is also set to elect new members for the joint committees, and will designate a new secretary on Oct. 21 – the constitutional deadline for the vote, lawmakers quoted Berri as saying.
Berri also met with Deputy Speaker Farid Makari to discuss the joint committees’ meeting on the salary scale bill.
“I discussed today with the speaker the salary and ranks issue after it had been referred to the joint parliamentary committees,” Makari told reporters after the meeting. “With regard to the salary scale issue, there are two key issues to be discussed after most points have been agreed on. The first issue is related to the [private] teachers and the other concerns the military.
“All issues will be discussed [by the committees] in a bid to reach positive results as soon as possible,” he added.
In response to a question, Makari said the extension of Parliament’s mandate, which expires on Nov. 20, has become inevitable.
Berri, according to lawmakers, also said he stood side-by-side with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri against holding parliamentary elections before the election of a president. “I refuse to hold parliamentary elections if a major component in Lebanon rejects it,” Berri said.
MP Ibrahim Kanaan, head of the parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee, welcomed Berri’s call for a meeting of the joint committees to review the salary scale bill.
“This proves that the salary and ranks scale is still a priority,” Kanaan told Elnashra website. He said his committee was fully ready to cooperate with Makari to bring the salary scale bill out of the paralysis from which it has suffered for months.
Last week, Parliament postponed action on the wage hike bill over protests, including the exclusion of private school teachers from the bill.
Meanwhile, the UCC, which represents civil servants and public and private school teachers, threatened to stage an open-ended strike and sit-in in two weeks if the lawmakers fail to pass the salary scale.
“We informed the MPs that we will hold a strike and sit-ins if the salary scale is not endorsed by the lawmakers next week. We don’t want to go back to the streets, but we may be compelled to do so if we noticed the lawmakers are dragging their feet,” Nehme Mahfoud, head of the Association of Private School Teachers, told The Daily Star Wednesday.
According to Mahfoud, all of the parliamentary blocs have promised to include the private school teachers in the salary scale bill.
“We have received assurances from the blocs. The government will not pay a penny if the private school teachers were not included in the bill,” he said.
Mahfoud believes that some parliamentary blocs used the issue of military personnel high wage demands to scuttle the salary scale. He also insisted that the private school teachers would not dare raise tuitions if Parliament votes in favor of granting higher wages to the teachers.
For his part, MP Yassin Jaber from Berri’s bloc was not too confident the parliamentary committees would be able to reach a common understanding on the salary scale. He feared that if the cost of the salary scale hovers above the ceiling agreed among the MPs, then the chances of passing this bill soon would be very dim.
Jaber admitted that the lawmakers have not yet reached a final agreement on the cost of the salary scale, adding that if the retired government employees and military personnel were included in the salary scale, then the cost would surely rise. – Additional reporting by Osama Habib
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