Nahhas bitter about being forced to resign

BEIRUT: Outgoing Labor Minister Charbel Nahhas seized the opportunity at a handover ceremony at the Labor Ministry Monday to take aim at Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, expressing bitterness over the way he was forced to resign.

Nahhas was replaced last week by retired judge Salim Jreissati after opting to resign rather than sign a controversial Cabinet decree approving the transportation allowance. He admitted differences with Aoun at the ceremony during which he handed over the Labor Ministry to Jreissati. Both Nahhas and Jreissati were nominated by Aoun, whose Parliamentary Change and Reform bloc is represented by 10 ministers in Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s 30-member Cabinet.

In a speech on the occasion, Jreissati also pledged to carry out change in the Labor Ministry within the country’s ruling sectarian political system.

Nahhas’ resignation and his replacement by Jreissati have led to the resumption of Cabinet sessions after a month-long hiatus following a dispute between Mikati and ministers from Aoun’s bloc over the transportation allowance decree and civil service appointments.

The Cabinet met Monday for the first time since Mikati suspended its sessions on Feb. 1 following the rift with Aoun’s ministers over the appointments of Christians to key posts in the public administration.

Before the handover ceremony, Nahhas briefed Jreissati on some of the ministry’s projects that have been accomplished and other projects that have yet to be carried out.

“Your Excellency, Mr. Salim Jreissati, the legal labor minister, I hand you today symbolically the Labor Ministry in the Lebanese Republic, while I walk out of an experiment of two years and three months in two successive governments. I hand you the torch after performing my duty in this respect, hoping that you will develop what I had tried to develop,” Nahhas said in a speech during the ceremony, attended by the ministry’s senior officials and advisers.

“I have begun this experiment and stayed in it, thanks to Michel Aoun’s support but I finished it in disagreement with him,” Nahhas said. He added that serving as the telecommunications minister in former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Cabinet and the labor minister in Mikati’s Cabinet did not change his convictions and principles.

“Rather, [the ministerial post] allowed me to sense the arrogance of the arrogant [people] and the weakness of the oppressed, which made me cling more to my convictions and principles and that one should not be neutral between the oppressor and the oppressed,” Nahhas said.

He said he had refused to sign the transportation allowance decree because it was “based on an unconstitutional Cabinet decision” and because it was proposed by the prime minister who is not the appropriate side to do so.

“The decree clearly and publicly violated the law and because it was unjust for all Lebanon’s workers, depriving them of LL3 trillion in end-of-service compensations,” Nahhas said.

Nahhas has been at the center of a political storm since last month, when he refused to sign a Cabinet decree officially approving a transportation allowance, arguing that it should be ratified by Parliament first. However, he did sign the decree containing the Cabinet’s decision to raise the minimum wage.

Aoun has also admitted differences with Nahhas. He told reporters last week that he had reached an agreement with Speaker Nabih Berri to legalize the transportation allowance decree, but Nahhas’ “circumstances might not allow him to cooperate with us.”

Aoun was reported Monday to have criticized Nahhas’ performance during meetings with his supporters. Al-Joumhouria newspaper quoted Aoun as telling FPM members: “We named him [a minister] after we removed the dust from him. No doubt, he is [an educated man], but he wanted to show off and take us wherever he wants instead of us taking him to where we want.”

Aoun was further quoted as saying: “Nahhas is like a plane which we downed because we did not want to fall with it. It crashed by itself and the passengers survived ... This man has stabbed us.”

In his speech, Nahhas warned Jreissati to be wary of what he called “rebellious employees and violators protected by politicians on sectarian pretexts.”

Responding, Jreissati praised Nahhas as “an extraordinary man of a national stature and intellectual and financial integrity” and promised to introduce change at the Labor Ministry. “I hope I will be able to carry out the projects he mentioned in his speech and during his private meeting with him,” he said.

“I know that there are many issues that need more social justice and that social security in Lebanon is not secured as it should.

“I know the problems of this ministry through my various reading not only from the fruitful closed meeting with him,” Jreissati said.

“I know that workers lack rights. I am aware of the competitive projects and in my country and the competition to the labor force.

“I promise you that demands for change and reform are not merely a slogan. I will seek to [carry out] change and reform within the current [political] setup,” he added.

Jreissati said he will work under one slogan: “Yes to stability, yes to calm but no to tranquility before the ambitions of this ministry have been attained.”

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Nahhas bitter about being forced to resign