Mabrook! The Constitutional Council in Lebanon has halted the taxes today. The very poorly drafted law, even by its writers’ own admission, has been shot down because of how poorly it took into consideration Lebanon’s highest law: the constitution.

What Happened

The above is the decision by the Constitutional Council which came out today and will be published in the Official Newspaper tomorrow. It basically states that there are several issues with the law’s constitutionality.

Basically, in a nutshell:

• They voted wrong. They should have voted by show of hands when called, they didn’t wait to be called. How bad of a parliament do you have to be if you don’t even know how to vote according to the constitution and your parliamentary by-laws?
• This law was made to pay for another law, in the absence of an actual budget for the country, which is technically unconstitutional. We haven’t had a budget in over a decade I think, so making up laws, then making up one after it to pay for it, isn’t how government or legislative work happens.
• This is the controversial “bank tax” issue. The tax law proposes a tax on the banking sector, which is a breach of the fact that taxes should target all sectors, not just a few. This is a controversial one, and I’ll get to it in more detail below.
• The last reason is that the 11th article in the tax law is too vague, which makes implementing it a problem, which the council saw as even more reason to shoot down this law.

How it Happened

After the melodramatic way the MPs tried to pass this law, after the president suspended parliament’s work for a month, Kataeb chief Samy Gemayel promised to appeal against the taxes law. His bloc is 5 MPs, and he managed to get 5 other MPs to get the 10 minimum to be able to send an appeal to the Constitutional Council.

Apart from the 5 Kataeb MPs, the other MPs were Boutros Harb, Dory Chamoun, Salim Karam, Fouad Saad and Khaled Daher.

Now, here, I have extremely harsh reservations about some of the names, especially Khaled Daher. The anti-army, pro-extremist groups MP from Akkar who has been at odds with his Future Movement bloc for a while now, is a disgrace to Lebanon. However, if his signature helped kill that law, and that he signed for reasons that might not be ideal (just to spite his political party), then so be it, the law has been stopped, and hopefully he will be voted out in the upcoming elections.

The Bank Tax Issue

Many people will give this clause as an excuse to downplay how important this decision was. They state that it’s just protecting the banks’ interests in Lebanon, stopping them from paying taxes on their massive yearly profits.

I agree, and think banks in Lebanon should pay their fair share, especially since they own most of our public debt. However, people need to remember that the Constitutional Council’s job is to ensure laws are constitutional, not right or wrong on a moral, ethical or big-picture level. They’re the guys that decide if something is off-side, not if the general direction of the government is going down the toilet.

So, I think it was a smart move including that clause, to further shore up the claim about the law’s unconstitutionality. In other words, if you’re in the “fuck the banks” camp, don’t fret, this isn’t just about them. Singling them out in the law though, helped bring that law down, and that’s definitely a win for everyone.

What this Says About Our Government

That they are incredibly incompetent. I mean, have these MPs even read the constitution they’re supposed to protect? How incompetent can a public official be? Apparently, enough for the Constitutional Council to unanimously say “Nope.”

What can we expect from “lawmakers” that noticed the mistakes in their law, but said, “it’s ok, we’ll ratify this now and fix it later”. I mean, what the actual flying fuck? If you had any other job, your ass would be kicked out on the street for saying something so incredibly stupid and insulting to the taxpayers that pay your bloated salaries (for life and after life), who you are trying to steal from, again.

What’s Next?

The parliament can retry to pass a similar law, without all the mistakes and gross violations of the constitution. But, this risks another shoot down by the Constitutional Council. They can try to pass a budget, and include ways to figure out how to get money to finance the wage hike (that is still an active law).

They can also try to reform the corruption and wasteful spending, like taking dozens of people, including family and friends, on expensive trips to NY for the UN General Assembly and other trips. They can stop renting out ministries from their buddies in prime real estate locations, when the government owns plenty of empty buildings and lands. They can tax the illegal properties that occupy most of the Lebanese coast. There’s a million and one ways to finance the wage hike for public employees, that doesn’t include taking money out of those same pockets, and our pockets, employees of the private or non-governmental sectors.

It’s important to keep pressure on the parliament, so that they don’t try to rob us again. I don’t envy the government, who now has to figure out where to pay the wage hike from, given the taxes law has been dumped. Knowing them, they’ll still try to tax us despite no law, and that is when things will get dangerous, maybe violent even. Lebanese people are getting poorer by the day, and there’s only so much corruption we can stomach, given the tax law that was just shot down, would have pushed more than 100,000 of us under the poverty line…

The Elections are Coming

And we must remember who did what in this entire scandal. Samy Gemayel did Lebanese taxpayers a huge favor, and their stubbornness and understanding of the law and constitution helped ruin the plans of the ruling parties to syphon more money from us, without doing any reforms. As far as I’m concerned, the 128 illegitimate thieves, are now 123 illegitimate ones, cause 5 of them just did their jobs right for a change.

Everyone with those taxes, without any reforms, needs to stay home and never walk into parliament again. We have too many old farts that are political MPs, but not enough lawmakers who actually understand their job, the law and the constitution.

This will hopefully reinvigorate the movement against the ruling parties, and energize the independent campaigns being formed to run in the upcoming elections.

Mabrook everyone! Now let’s keep an eye on what the illegitimate MPs try to do next!