Ball in their court

This summer, after years of procrastination, Lebanon passed a law increasing salaries for public sector workers. To help offset the salary increase, Parliament approved new taxes. But, in a surprising move, a group of parliamentarians challenged the constitutionality of the tax law in front of Lebanon’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, which ruled in their favor by annulling the new taxes. Since then, Parliament has re-legislated the tax law, postponed full implementation of the salary scale, and legislated a budget. But Parliament legislated the budget through measures that may have broken the Public Accounting Law of 1963 and violated Lebanon’s constitution. In the event of a challenge, the high court’s previous ruling on the tax law could set the stage for a showdown between lawmakers and the judiciary over public finances. Pistols at dawn For much of 2017, as Executive has reported, Lebanese officials did little to explain to the