Bassil Warns Again: Either Electricity or No Government
Energy Minister Jebran Bassil has warned the government that it should assume its responsibilities in resolving the electricity crisis gripping Lebanon or else it would be doomed.
“There are obstacles from several sides,” Bassil told As Safir daily published Monday, reiterating claims that certain parties were hindering the implementation of power projects.
“The government should know that it has two choices – it should either immediately assume its responsibilities through its parliamentary and ministerial majority and take the appropriate steps to push the frozen projects forward or become threatened because the electricity issue doesn’t burn the minister alone but the entire cabinet,” he said.
“There should either be electricity or no government,” the minister reiterated. During several months of bickering on his electricity plan in the summer, Bassil warned the cabinet on several occasions to adopt his proposal or face the fate of collapse.
Parliament endorsed in September the electricity draft law, adopting with a few amendments Bassil’s $1.2 billion electricity proposal approved by the government.
But Bassil told As Safir that parliament’s approval of the draft law is only “part of the whole.” It should be followed by efforts to bring ships that generate power and to rehabilitate plants and electricity lines, he said.
He also accused some parties of politicizing the electricity crisis by claiming that the Free Patriotic Movement, of which Bassil is a member, was making an unequal electricity rationing.
This campaign “makes us stronger and not the other way around,” he told the newspaper.
Protests were held in several areas of Lebanon lately as angry residents blocked roads in Aley, Beirut’s southern suburbs, Nabatiyeh and Sidon over the weekend.
But Bassil warned that “the Lebanese should know the electricity crisis will become much worse and there will be more rationing.”
He challenged the other members of the cabinet on Sunday by telling visitors at his home in Batroun “let them sack me if the can.”
“Those who want to raise my photo (during protests), we would raise in return hundreds of pictures of people who have brought the electricity to a dire situation,” he said.
Source: Naharnet
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