Don’t stop now

If Lebanese parliamentarians were school children, they would long ago have been expelled en masse. Far from merely forgetting to do their homework, they have been skipping class for an entire year; prior to this week the last law they passed was back in 2012. So the very fact that they finally got together to pass a few bills is less a cause for celebration than an acceptance that they needed to catch up with their homework. Amongst the bouquet of bills were both things to be cheered and measures leaving much room for improvement. Chief among the latter was the controversial domestic violence bill. Campaigners have already criticized it as it was heavily edited during Parliament’s committee stage, with the new version considerably weaker than the original. Other laws passed included the decision to abandon the old rent law – which kept rents in some buildings artificially low – as