Lebanese politicians hurl insults at each other as tensions boil over in parliament

Lebanese politicians hurl insults at each other as tensions boil over in parliament
The presidency has been vacant since Michel Aoun’s term concluded at the end of October last year. Politicians have been unable to reach agreement on a successor. (AFP/File)
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Updated 29 March 2023

Lebanese politicians hurl insults at each other as tensions boil over in parliament

Lebanese politicians hurl insults at each other as tensions boil over in parliament
  • Meanwhile, the US Treasury has imposed sanctions on two Lebanese citizens accused of being drug kingpins

BEIRUT: Politicians in Lebanon shouted and hurled insults at each other during a meeting of a joint parliamentary committee on Tuesday. It came as tensions continued to rise amid the ongoing failure to choose a new president and growing concerns that it will be impossible to hold municipal elections scheduled for May.

Amal Movement MP Ghazi Zeaiter, who has been accused of involvement in the events leading up to the massive explosion at Beirut’s port in August 2020, clashed with independent MP Melhem Khalaf, who has been staging a sit-in at the parliament for more than two months over the failure of MPs to elect a new president. As tensions rose, Zeaiter was accused of publicly insulting Khalaf.

Another dispute, over the municipal elections, broke out between Sami Gemayel, head of the Kataeb Party, and the Amal Movement’s Ali Hassan Khalil, who is also accused of involvement in the port explosion. The former accused the latter of using “immoral” insults.

As the rows continued, the meeting was ended. It took place a day after caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati reversed his unpopular decision, announced last week, to delay the start of daylight saving time for a month “to allow those fasting during Ramadan to rest for an hour.”

“What happened during the session was shocking,” said MP Hadi Abu Al-Hassan, a member of the Democratic Gathering bloc. “The country’s situation will become too dangerous if we continue this way.”

Politicians need to heed the voice of reason and consider carefully the best interests of the country and its people, he added.

“We need to elect a president, form a government and start implementing reforms instead of carrying on with this tense drama.”

The presidency has been vacant since Michel Aoun’s term concluded at the end of October last year. Politicians have been unable to reach agreement on a successor.

Abu Al-Hassan said that Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, has been talking with members of a number of parties in an attempt to ensure the volatile political situation remains under control but underlying tensions remain high.

After the ill-tempered parliamentary meeting, Gemayel refused to go into the details of the dispute but said that he considers what happened to be “a dangerous offense against sanctities and we cannot accept this.”

He warned that if some officials persist with their current approach to managing the country’s affairs, even bigger problems lie in store.

“If I disclosed what happened, I would be contributing to creating the strife that some want to drag the country into, and we do not want that,” Gemayel added.

He called on Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri to “address what happened” and added “if he does not want to deal with it, then he can consider the message received and we will discuss with our allies how we will take things from here.”

Warning of the potential dangers of failure to hold the municipal elections, Gemayel stressed “the need for the state to cover the cost” of the polls “as the required amount is $8 million.”

The Lebanese government has said it is unable to cover the cost of the elections, according to a source in the Ministry of Interior, as “there is no money or staff to hold them.”

The ministry has set the cost of the elections at $12 million. International donors, including the EU, the US Agency for International Development, and the UN Development Program, have pledged $3 million, which would cover the cost of necessities such as printing, stationery and logistics. The Lebanese state would need to provide the remaining money for election workers, judges, security, the transportation of ballot boxes, and electrical power, among other things.

Any decision to postpone the elections would require the calling of a legislative session. Christian parliamentary blocs refuse to agree to such sessions on the grounds that “Parliament is currently an electorate body whose sole purpose is to elect a president.” Meanwhile, other political forces do not want to be the ones responsible for passing a law that extends the terms of the current municipal councils.

In other news, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Lebanese citizens Hassan Daqqou and Nouh Zeaiter, who are accused of being drug lords.

Daqqou is a Lebanese-Syrian dual national from Tufail, a town the straddles the border with Syria. He was arrested in Lebanon in 2021 and remains in detention. The Criminal Court in Beirut last year sentenced him to seven years of hard labor for manufacturing Captagon and trafficking it to other countries. The US Treasury accuses him and his drug-trafficking operations of having direct links to Hezbollah.

Zeaiter is wanted by the Lebanese state on charges of drug trafficking. He is said to surround himself with no fewer than 14 armed guards and travels in four-wheel-drive vehicles with darkened windows. The US Treasury also links him with Hezbollah.

A few days ago, an army force ambushed a convoy on the outskirts of the town of Harbta in which wanted members of the Zeaiter family were traveling. During the armed battle that ensued, Zeaiter’s son, Mahdi, was injured and arrested.


Macron names French ex-minister Lebanon special envoy: presidency

Updated 11 sec ago

Macron names French ex-minister Lebanon special envoy: presidency

Macron names French ex-minister Lebanon special envoy: presidency
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron has named his former foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian as his personal envoy for Lebanon, in a new bid to end the country’s political crisis, the presidency said on Wednesday.
Le Drian, who served for five years as foreign minister up to 2022, will be charged with helping to find a “consensual and efficient” solution to the crisis which has only intensified after the deadly 2020 Beirut port explosion, said a presidential official, asking not to be named.

El-Sisi starts Africa tour in Angola

El-Sisi starts Africa tour in Angola
Updated 49 min 45 sec ago

El-Sisi starts Africa tour in Angola

El-Sisi starts Africa tour in Angola
  • Lourenco said that the relations between the two countries were important
  • During the tour, El-Sisi will hold a series of talks with the leaders on cooperation and address concerns on the continent

CAIRO: Abdel Fattah El-Sisi arrived on Wednesday in Angola at the start of a tour that also includes Zambia and Mozambique.
El-Sisi, the first Egyptian president to visit Angola, met his counterpart Joao Lourenco in Luanda and witnessed the signing of a number of agreements between the two countries.
Lourenco said that the relations between the two countries were important.
Ahmad Fahmy, a spokesman for the Egyptian presidency, said that El-Sisi’s tour in southern Africa shows the country is “keen to intensify communication and coordination with its African brothers and to cultivate closer cooperation at the economic, trade, and investment levels.”
During the tour, El-Sisi will hold a series of talks with the leaders on cooperation and address concerns on the continent.
El-Sisi will attend the 22nd summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa during his visit to the Zambian capital, Lusaka. Zambia is taking the rotating chairmanship from Egypt.
In April, Ahmed Samir, Egypt’s minister of trade and industry, announced that the volume of trade exchange between Egypt and the African markets amounted to $2.117 billion during the first quarter of this year.
The value of Egypt’s exports to Angola increased in 2022 by 14.4 percent compared to the year 2012, according to a statement from the central agency for public mobilization and statistics.
Egypt’s exports to Angola in 2022 amounted to $22.9 million, compared to $20 million in 2021.


Lawyer and diplomat Abda Sharif named as UK’s new ambassador to Yemen

Lawyer and diplomat Abda Sharif named as UK’s new ambassador to Yemen
Updated 07 June 2023

Lawyer and diplomat Abda Sharif named as UK’s new ambassador to Yemen

Lawyer and diplomat Abda Sharif named as UK’s new ambassador to Yemen
  • Her previous diplomatic posts include spells as Britain’s deputy ambassador to Lebanon and as head of the UK’s mission in Benghazi, Libya
  • Following the start of the war in Yemen in late 2014, the UK closed its embassy in Sanaa and transferred its ambassador and staff to Riyadh

AL-MUKALLA: British authorities have appointed lawyer and diplomat Abda Sharif as the UK’s new ambassador to Yemen.
She will take up her post in September and succeeds Richard Oppenheim, who will move to another diplomatic role, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.
Sharif’s most recent position was head of the Iraq and Arabian Peninsula Department in the Middle East and North Africa Directorate at the FCDO. Between 2012 and 2016, she served as deputy ambassador to Lebanon. Before that, in 2011, she led the UK Office in Benghazi, Libya.
“Delighted to be the next UK Ambassador to #Yemen. Look forward to returning to the Middle East, and to working with the excellent @UKinYemen,” Sharif said in a message posted on Twitter, referring to the UK’s embassy in the country.
Following the start of the war in Yemen in late 2014, the UK closed its embassy in Sanaa and transferred its ambassador and staff to Riyadh.
Sharif’s appointment comes at a time when the UN’s special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, and the international community, including the UK, are stepping up pressure on the Yemeni government and the Houthis to reach an agreement that can end the long-running civil war.
Extensive international efforts have so far failed to persuade the Houthis to formally renew a long-term UN-brokered cease-fire, after a temporary truce expired in October of last year, or to end their drone and missile attacks on oil facilities in government-controlled provinces, which have halted exports that provide the country’s main source of income.
The Houthis have said they will only cease their attacks on the facilities if the Yemeni government shares oil revenues with them and pays public employees in areas they control.
Meanwhile, the militia have launched drone and ground attacks in government-controlled territories across the country over the past 48 hours.
Residents in besieged Taiz said on Tuesday that a Houthi sniper killed a man as he walked through a small village in the city’s Saber district. Saeed Ahmed Abdullah, 43, reportedly died on the way to the hospital.
Sporadic fighting between the Houthis and government forces has been reported in a number of contested areas outside of Taiz. Residents of the city have long complained that a UN-brokered truce has neither halted arbitrary bombardments and ground attacks by the Houthis, nor eased the militia’s siege of the city.


US vice president Kamala Harris: Israel needs ‘independent judiciary’

US vice president Kamala Harris: Israel needs ‘independent judiciary’
Updated 07 June 2023

US vice president Kamala Harris: Israel needs ‘independent judiciary’

US vice president Kamala Harris: Israel needs ‘independent judiciary’
  • Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen: Harris was perhaps not fully informed about the details of the judicial changes his government was seeking

WASHINGTON: US vice president Kamala Harris said on Tuesday that Israel’s democracy requires “an independent judiciary,” wading into the controversy over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul that has drawn mass protests in Israel.
“America will continue to stand for the values that have been the bedrock of the US-Israel relationship, which includes continuing to strengthen our democracies, which as the (Israeli) ambassador has said, are both built on strong institutions, checks and balances, and I’ll add: an independent judiciary,” Harris said.
The vice president spoke at a reception celebrating the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding hosted by the country’s embassy in Washington. Her remarks on the judiciary drew applause.
Harris also reiterated the Biden administration’s “ironclad commitment to the security of Israel.”
Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen said Harris was perhaps not fully informed about the details of the judicial changes his government was seeking, which were intended, he said, to ensure a strong and independent judiciary which was more balanced.
“If you ask her what troubles her about the reform, she may not be able to cite even one clause that bothers her,” Cohen told Israel’s public broadcaster Kansas “I don’t know whether she read the bill, my estimation is that she has not.”
Weeks of unprecedented street demonstrations followed Netanyahu’s proposed package of reforms of the Supreme Court, which members of his religious-nationalist coalition accuse of overreach and elitism.
Under pressure at home and abroad, including from US President Joe Biden’s administration, Netanyahu has suspended the overhaul to try to negotiate a consensus with the political opposition.
Critics see a threat to independence of the courts by the prime minister, who is on trial on graft charges that he denies.
Top economists and national security veterans have warned of fallout, saying an independent court system is crucial to Israel’s democratic norms and economic strength.
Before Harris spoke, Israeli president Isaac Herzog said in a video address to the crowd that he planned to visit the White House and address a joint session of the US Congress “in the near future.” The trip is expected in July.
Biden has yet to extend a White House invitation to Netanyahu, despite Israel’s status as a key Middle East ally.
The two leaders have had chilly relations since Biden took office. Biden had pressed Netanyahu in recent months to drop the judicial overhaul plan.
Netanyahu, who was prime minister for three years in the 1990s and then from 2009 to 2021, took office again in December to start his sixth term.


Turkiye jails teen who added moustache to Erdogan poster

Turkiye jails teen who added moustache to Erdogan poster
Updated 07 June 2023

Turkiye jails teen who added moustache to Erdogan poster

Turkiye jails teen who added moustache to Erdogan poster
  • He was arrested after being identified by CCTV cameras

ISTANBUL: Turkish authorities on Tuesday seized and jailed a 16-year-old youth for drawing a moustache on an election campaign poster showing re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, media reports said.
Several media close to the opposition, including daily newspapers BirGun, Cumhuriyet and private TV station Halk TV, said the youth from the southeastern town of Mersin was accused of defacing the poster near his home with a pen, scribbling “a Hitler moustache and writing insulting comments.”
He was arrested after being identified by CCTV cameras, media reports said. Authorities interviewed him at his home where he reportedly “admitted drawing the moustache” while denying writing the accompanying comments.
Taken before the public prosecutor he was found to have “insulted the president” and was jailed at a nearby youth facility, according to Halk TV.
Erdogan extended his 20-year rule over Turkiye after winning the May 28 second round of the presidential election to embark on a new five-year term.
According to the justice ministry, “insulting the president” is one of the most common crimes in Turkiye, resulting in 16,753 convictions last year.