A decision by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil on public sector employment stirred a wave of angry reactions in the Lebanese street.
Bassil announced on Friday the need to delete Article 80 of the State Budget.
The article calls for the employment of applicants for state positions, who have passed the Civil Service Board exams, but were not yet hired due to political disputes over a sectarian imbalance between Christian and Muslim applicants.
Successful civil service applicants for a number of public institutions have been demanding to be appointed to their respective posts in recent years, but remain unemployed because of a sectarian imbalance.
The Strong Lebanon parliamentary bloc, headed by Bassil, rejects Article 80 as it leads to a “breach of balances, agreements and understandings.”
“There is no use to strike balances, understandings and agreements in order to hire around 400 employees in the public sector,” Bassil said on Friday.
Mustaqbal MPs were the first to criticize Bassil’s comments, saying they were an attempt to topple the budget.
MP Samir Jisr said in this regard: “Minister Bassil can dictate his will to the members of his bloc, but certainly he cannot dictate his will on the rest of Parliament deputies.”
He went on to say: “Bassil’s threat to topple the budget to achieve his political desires is nothing more than a blackmail of the entire country under the pretext of the economic and financial crisis and the people’s sufferings.”
