Lebanese Parliament Vice President Elias Bou Saab expressed his strong dissatisfaction with "the repercussions of the poorly thought out decision to delay daylight saving time made by Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati."
Bou Saab stated that "Mikati bears primary responsibility for the decision. The Speaker of Parliament (Nabih Berri) has the right to request whatever he wants from the Prime Minister, but that does not mean I agree with the way the request was made or its content, just as anyone else has the right to request the opposite."
Bou Saab, who belongs to the "Strong Lebanon" bloc headed by MP Gebran Bassil, strongly criticized "the sectarian agitation that accompanied the decision, which came from multiple sources and led to significant risks for Lebanon."
In response to a question about MP Bassil's comments yesterday, Bou Saab stated, "Bassil also has the right to object to Mikati's decision."
"But I believe he made a mistake in using some words while criticizing the decision. We should not respond to an administrative error with sectarian rhetoric, even though I know that Bassil did not intend that," he added.
Bou Saab announced his refusal to participate in the Christian meeting called for by Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai "because Lebanon needs national meetings, and because we need to meet together as Christian and Muslim leaders to emerge from this crisis and elect a president."
Meanwhile, Caretaker Minister of Social Affairs, Hector Hajjar (affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement), considered that "the ongoing debate about the daylight saving time is only to distract public opinion from fundamental issues and to create divisions that we can do without, and has no benefit to the fasting and non-fasting ones."
He wrote on his Twitter account, saying, "Lebanon is producing large daily numbers of new poor people who live in a country without social protection for all segments of society. We are facing serious challenges that those concerned have overlooked, the most important of which are the salaries of public sector employees and the recent report of the International Monetary Fund."
Likewise, "the Lady of the Mountain Gathering" expressed its rejection of the government's decision to extend the winter time but at the same time criticized the sectarian reaction to it.
In a statement issued after the periodic meeting, it paused long at what it called three types of objection.
The statement said that "the first objection is a principled rejection of the improvisational method in managing the state outside the constitutional, national, and sound judgment, as shown by the meeting of Caretaker Prime Minister Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri."
The second objection is a "practical" one "related to the local work schedules' connection to the Arab and international time zones, especially television stations and airports, especially since the decision was issued 48 hours before the scheduled time, which disrupted these fields."
The third objection that was discussed in the gathering was represented by political and religious leaders who are in crisis and have jumped on the sectarian division wave around the decision, pouring oil on the fire and exploiting the situation to fuel their supporters.
The gathering strongly condemns the sectarian incitement that has taken place and confirms that what happened is not a dispute over whether to advance or delay the clock but rather a sign of the political leaders' inability to provide solutions to the major political and economic crises that Lebanon is experiencing especially the presidential crisis. Therefore, they use any incident of this kind to escape forward and disavow their responsibilities for the crisis.
The gathering considered that "given this explosive and dangerous internal situation and the succession of political and military developments in the region that make Lebanon sleep on one thing and wake up to another, it is required that the Lebanese people adhere to the constitution and the decisions of international and Arab legitimacy, and unite in all their sects and groups around a single demand, which is to lift the Iranian occupation from Lebanon. It also emphasized that either the Lebanese time is part of the Arab and international time, or it is part of the Iranian time, whose clock ticks differently from the rest of the world."
Excellent Jaafari Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Qabalan called "Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai and Christian brothers," emphasizing that the issue is more significant than a couple of hours, a vacant presidential post, and a vacant presidential palace.
He said, "It is not in the interest of Christians and Muslims to obstruct the presidential settlement, destroy the state project, cut off national partnership, boycott parliament, hinder the cabinet, and deal with the election of a president with a (winning and losing) mentality, while the danger is great and Lebanon is on fire, and strife is wandering, and the fuse of national massacre is fueled by sectarianism and international maps."
He addressed Rai and the Christians, saying, "Your Beatitude, Patriarch, and Christian brothers, Lebanon is waiting for you, and rescuing the country from the catastrophe of political paralysis and the cancer of division is waiting for you, and the acceptable national presidential settlement is waiting for you, and partition is an explosion, and sectarianism is destruction, and hard heads are the worst danger to Lebanon and its national partnership."
He stressed that "Lebanon stands on its Islamic-Christian unity and its national partnership, otherwise the fire of massacres will ignite," emphasizing that "we cannot be saved from this silent and blind strife except through a national presidential settlement and broad national solidarity of the size of saving Lebanon."