Return to sanity now

After years without a state budget, Parliament met in October and voted the 2017 budget into law. What Parliament should have done is pass the 2018 budget, because the current fiscal year is almost over. There are also allegations that Parliament broke the law and violated the constitution: To pass a budget an audit must first be performed, and there are both political and technical reasons why Lebanon has not audited its books since the 2005 budget (see overview). Parliament could have required an audit of all the financial accounts since the 2005 budget, but it did not. The constitution requires an annual audit that must happen before a new budget can be legislated. Parliament worked around this constitutional requirement by inserting a clause in the 2017 budget law that allowed the state to delay the audit for 12 months. This arguably violated the constitution. If the constitution is not