The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 26 2004

Legal experts, MPs dust off neglected draft laws
Proposals often circulate for years

By Nada Raad
Daily Star staff
Monday, April 26, 2004

A proposal to encourage companies and the private sector to hire
university graduates in return for tax reductions was just one of
several ideas put forward during a seminar organized by the Lebanese
Legislation Monitor (LLM).

The brainchild of the Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace,
the LMM is a three-year program designed to make sure the draft laws
and proposals studied by Parliament, the Cabinet and public
administrations are in conformity with the rules of the state,
constitutional norms and human rights.

During Saturday’s seminar, several MPs, lawyers and professors
examined draft proposals and laws that are still stuck in Parliament
and attempted to identify the best ways to push them forward.

Lawyer and university professor Antoine Sfeir proposed a law that
would promote an increase in youth employment after they graduate.
Sfeir, who was speaking about the difficulties of renewing laws here,
said that the proposal is already implemented in developed countries
to facilitate the hiring of young graduates who don’t have real world
experience.

“The law would stipulate a reduction of taxes paid by companies and
the private sector according to the number of fresh graduates they
hire per year,” Sfeir said.

Sfeir’s proposal was welcomed by Beirut MP Walid Eido, Baabda MP
Salah Honein and Zahle MP Nicolas Fattoush, who said that they would
be the first to agree on the proposal once it was handed to
Parliament.

However, proposals and draft laws sometimes need several years before
they are passed by Parliament’s committees as well as the Cabinet.

“Many side talks are done by MPs when discussing a certain draft law
and politicians often interfere to stop the discussion of a certain
draft law,” said Minyeh MP Ahmad Fatfat, who is a member of
Parliament’s Administration and Justice committee.

University professor Tony Atallah said that 123 pages of draft laws
and law proposals are currently discussed by Parliament’s committees
or revised by the Cabinet.

Atallah, who spent more than two months searching for the drafts laws
and proposals due to the lack of an organized archive for such
documents, succeeded, at the end, in summarizing them into 16 pages.

He said that currently the municipal draft law is discussed by
Parliament’s committees. Atallah noticed in his research that until
now there are no law proposals regarding parliamentary elections,
which are scheduled to be held in the spring of 2005.

Beirut MP Serge Toursarkissian, who was present at the seminar, said
that one of his proposals stipulates the formation of a 14-member MP
committee to take charge of relations with Lebanon’s expatriate
population.

Kesrouan MP Neamatallah Abi Nasr said that he had already proposed a
similar law enabling Lebanese living abroad to be represented in
Parliament by 12 separate MPs.

Toursarkissian made it clear during the seminar that his increase of
the number of MPs from 12 to 14 was to allow the Armenian community
to be represented among the MPs representing the Lebanese abroad.

Also discussed during the seminar, was the draft of the rent law
currently under discussion by a parliamentary committee. It gives
landlords the right to evict tenants by paying 20 percent of the
salable value of the property. As it currently stands, Parliament’s
Joint Committee has extended the rent law, which was endorsed in
1992, until June 2004 to allow the Finance and Budget Committee to
finish studying the new draft.

There are also draft laws and law proposals put forward by different
MPs to revise the military service. Western Bekaa MP Robert Ghanem,
one of the MPs proposing such an amendment, said that the military
service law should be amended because many Lebanese living abroad are
currently not registering their newborn children as Lebanese to avoid
making them go through the military service.

Other draft laws and law proposals currently under consideration
include one that calls for Lebanon to join the Islamic Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), a draft law
stipulating the general health safety of Lebanese citizens, and a
quota for women’s representation in politics.

Lawyer and lecturer at Sagesse University Paul Morcos said that,
although the elected parliamentary bodies in 1992, 1996 and 2000 left
a large amount of legislation outstanding, the question that should
be asked is whether these pieces of legislation respect the
principles of codification, democracy and human rights, or if its
production is nothing more than “legislative inflation?”

Morcos then highlighted the flaws present in Lebanon’s laws, which he
said are mainly caused by the “translation” of the Lebanese laws from
“old French laws” – something which he said did not go hand-in-hand
with the Lebanese reality.

For her part, Professor of Law at Lebanese University Amirah Abu Mrad
said that although Article 7 of the Constitution stipulates that all
Lebanese are equal, such a statement is a “lie.”

She said that if citizens here are equal, then the government should
have implemented the civil marriage law which is a critical part of
achieving gender equality.

According to Abu Mrad, a statute dating from 1936 stipulates the
implementation of a marriage law, which until now is still absent.
“The government should allow civil marriage and apologize to its
citizens for a delay of more than 65 years in implementation,” she
said.