Summary
This week promises to be crucial with regard to the Cabinet's endorsement of the 2017 draft budget and the launching of legislative Parliament sessions to debate and ratify a host of draft laws, including the public sector's controversial salary hike bill that has been listed on the agenda. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil has said his Free Patriotic Movement would unveil a new initiative Monday aimed at breaking the monthslong deadlock over a new electoral law to replace the disputed 1960 majoritarian system, amid uncertainty on whether the FPM leader's latest hybrid vote proposal would be accepted by all the parties.
While the parties are open to Bassil's new proposal, he warned that if only one faction – a clear allusion to MP Walid Jumblatt's bloc – rejected it, this would derail agreement on a new vote law to govern the upcoming elections.
Bassil said last month that the FPM would suggest a new hybrid electoral law after his two previous proposals had been rejected by Jumblatt's bloc and other groups.
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