Better to have than to have not

ENAR

A legal challenge of the 2018 budget law taken to the Constitutional Council, Lebanon’s highest court, threatened to cancel what was the country’s second state budget passed in the last six months, on the back of no budget at all for almost 12 years. Parliament ratified the 2018 budget without approving an audit of public finances, amounting to a violation of the constitution the court says, and inserted clauses to the law that the court deemed non-essential to budgetary matters. In total, the court struck seven articles from the budget law and rebuked Parliament for its lack of oversight on government spending and collection, saying that by not approving an audit, they had left the door open to corruption. Given the weaknesses in Lebanon’s economy and the challenges facing the state’s coffers, however, the court decided against annulling the law in its entirety—instead ruling that it is better to have