Open the doors of Parliament

There is an old British adage about the frustrations of everyday life. “You wait an hour for a bus,” the saying goes, “and then three come along all at once.” In the first week of April, after going over a year without passing a single bill, Lebanon’s expired Parliament reconvened and jolted the body politic into action. In total, parliamentarians confirmed over 70 bills in only a few days. While this magazine agrees that action is certainly preferably to inaction, it is disconcerting that many of these bills only received a cursory analysis in a public forum. As they rushed to push legislation through, numerous potentially important laws received fewer than 15 minutes deliberation in Parliament. When Executive interviewed Minister of Tourism Michel Pharaon, he mentioned a new bill he personally pushed through that, while potentially positive, has had little analysis by civil society. Even those laws that pricked the