Lebanon's Electricity Company Obstructs Work of State Institutions

Électricité du Liban building (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Électricité du Liban building (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Lebanon's Electricity Company Obstructs Work of State Institutions

Électricité du Liban building (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Électricité du Liban building (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Hallway windows leading to the office of Lebanon’s prime minister in the Grand Serail in central Beirut are covered with curtains of another kind.

Wood panels, and pieces of reinforced nylon, are what separates the office from the outside world. Moreover, the hard shutters help air conditioning systems maintain indoor air quality and temperatures, especially when Prime Minister Najib Mikati is in his office receiving guests.

The government palace, since the deadly August 4 port explosion, has remained the same. Besides shattered glass, some of the Grand Serail’s institutions were put out of service.

However, some of the destruction was improved on—such as replacing window glass with hardened nylon.

Serail sources speak of a Kuwaiti pledge to repair what was damaged.

According to the same sources, the Council for Development and Reconstruction is expected to undertake the task of coordinating and developing studies in preparation for their execution.

Despite hopes and plans for fixing the damage sustained by the government palace, there remains the problem of electricity, which rarely reaches the Serail.

Power cuts have forced officials at the Serail to ration services that depend on electricity. They now turn off air conditioners in most of the government palace’s offices.

Air conditioning is only turned on in the prime minister’s office, whenever he is present or scheduled for meetings. When Mikati is gone, the officials go back to rationing electricity to a bare minimum.

The absence of the prime minister has become more evident recently, with him limiting his appointments to pre-noon hours only, and to four days a week in order to save energy and fuel.

As for Parliament, the recent power outage that prevented parliamentary committees from convening on Tuesday and before was not the first of its kind.

Most parliamentary sessions recently have suffered from power cuts, including the confidence session for Mikati’s government last year, and the election session for the speaker and his deputy months ago.

These power shortages paint a picture of how the public sector and government institutions in Lebanon are slowly collapsing under the brunt of Electricite du Liban’s inability to secure electricity and the institutions’ budgets failing to cover exchange rate differences.

The financial crisis that hit the country has affected the working mechanisms of the Lebanese state apparatus.

Banque du Liban and the state as a whole failing to recognize the collapse of the Lebanese pound, and their insisting on adopting the old price of 1,500 pounds to the dollar, renders state agencies unable to adapt to the currency’s realistic price.

On Tuesday, the Lebanese pound’s exchange rate crossed the threshold of 34,000 pounds to the dollar.

This has left state institutions unable to purchase supplies from abroad according to the official price.

Electricite du Liban constantly complains that the Central Bank is not complying with its request to convert what it owns in its accounts from pounds to dollars according to the official exchange rate to purchase equipment, spare parts, and fuel.

Consequently, Lebanon must live on fuel from Iraq.

Iraqi fuel only provides three hours of electricity each day, as opposed to the 12 hours daily that Lebanese plants can offer should fuel become more accessible.

A source in the Lebanese Parliament told Asharq Al-Awsat that the cause of the crisis was the lack of communication with the Director General of Electricite du Liban.

When contacting the chief of Electricite du Liban ahead of parliamentary sessions, to secure the parliament’s electricity, it was discovered that they were in the hospital due to a health crisis.

With the fuel needed to run power generators running out, the decision was to postpone the sessions.

According to the source, the inability to secure fuel can be traced back to the depletion of credits, which are still based on the exchange rate of 1,500 pounds to the dollar.

Additional credits have been requested from the Ministry of Finance, but they have not yet been secured, the source explained.

“Electricite du Liban can provide between 10 and 12 hours of electricity per day, in the event that the necessary fuel is secured, but we are currently limited to what reaches us from Iraqi fuel, which provides three hours of unstable supply,” a source at the Lebanese Energy Ministry told Asharq Al-Awsat.

As for Baabda Palace, its situation is relatively better, as it is characterized by a special treatment, as does the Ministry of Defense. The two institutions make up for what they lack in power supply by operating their own generators and securing fuel from their flexible and independent budget.

But this does not prevent momentary power outages in the President’s office when he receives his foreign guests. When the power goes out the President usually apologizes with a shy smile, offset by a smile of understanding from the guest who knows, like other foreign officials, the extent of the electricity problem in Lebanon.

“It is an unfortunate situation that the Parliament is forced to postpone the meeting of its committees due to the power outage and the unavailability of diesel fuel to operate the generator in the Parliament,” tweeted lawmaker Faisal al-Sayegh.

Sayegh blamed the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Gebran Bassil.

Lebanon’s political class often exchanges blame for the electricity problem.

Those responsible for Lebanon’s power supply have not been able to resolve the electricity crisis since the end of the civil war in the nineties of the last century, despite the very large sums that were spent on this sector.

The failure to fix the public power sector has led to the emergence of a parallel electricity sector that is established on illegal private generators that are treated as a fait accompli.

While President Michel Aoun’s rivals hold his son-in-law, Bassil, responsible for the great waste and lack of achievement, the latter accuses the politicians opposing him of obstructing his mission.

Bassil had directly and indirectly supervised the sector for more than 15 years.

He sometimes blames the sector’s failures on Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, former Premier Saad Hariri and the current prime minister, Mikati.



NGOs Seek UN Emergency Rights Meeting, Investigation on Israel's War on Lebanon

An excavator operates around a damaged building targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in the town of Barja, Chouf district, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon, 06 November 2024. (EPA)
An excavator operates around a damaged building targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in the town of Barja, Chouf district, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon, 06 November 2024. (EPA)
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NGOs Seek UN Emergency Rights Meeting, Investigation on Israel's War on Lebanon

An excavator operates around a damaged building targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in the town of Barja, Chouf district, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon, 06 November 2024. (EPA)
An excavator operates around a damaged building targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in the town of Barja, Chouf district, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon, 06 November 2024. (EPA)

A group of NGOs pressed countries on Wednesday to hold an emergency session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to set up an investigation into abuses committed by both sides of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon.

Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah have been fighting for more than a year, in parallel with Israel's war in Gaza, after Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas.

The Lebanon conflict has dramatically escalated since mid-September, with most of the more than 3,000 deaths reported by Lebanon since October 2023 occurring in that period.

In a letter to diplomatic missions, 12 NGOs including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International urged states to act decisively over a situation "spiraling out of control", citing incidents such as Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure such as homes and hospitals.

"There's a huge risk of the same types of atrocities occurring in Lebanon as in Gaza," said Jeremie Smith, Geneva Director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, whose organization is leading the call.

"Entire towns are being levelled, thousands of people are being killed and injured and there's not a single investigation that has been opened by anyone, anywhere. We can't let that stand," he told Reuters.

The meeting is almost certain to obtain the required one-third of votes in the 47-member council but would need the support of Lebanon, which some diplomats said might have reservations about inviting scrutiny of Hezbollah's actions.

Lebanon's Geneva ambassador Salim Baddoura told Reuters a session was "possible" but that Beirut had yet to take a decision.

Debates addressing Israel's policies have in the past been controversial and current voting member the United States temporarily left the council in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump alleging anti-Israeli bias.

Such a meeting could also reignite allegations of double standards against Western states supportive of accountability for Russian violations in Ukraine since its 2022 invasion, but who maintain support for Israel.

Israel's military says it tries to avoid harming civilians but says Hamas and Hezbollah fighters hide among them.

The UN body does not have legally binding powers but it can mandate investigations to document abuses, which sometimes form the basis for war crimes prosecutions.