Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Minister, FPM chief, Gebran Bassil, called on Sunday for the adoption of policies that encourage refugees to return to their country, especially that several areas were safe today in Syria, adding that any Syrian who goes to Syria must lose his status as a refugee in Lebanon.
Bassil’s fresh stance came during the inauguration of the second Conference of Municipalities, which was organized by the Central Committee of Municipalities in FPM under his patronage at Habtoor Hotel in Sin El Fil.
Information Minister, Melhem Riachy, Environment Minister, Tarek Khatib, Trade and Economy Minister, Raed Khoury, Water and Energy Minister, Cesar Abi Khalil, State Minister of Combating Corruption Affairs, Nicolas Tueni, Tourism Minister, Owadis Kidanian, and a number of MPs as well as political, economic and media figures and heads of municipalities were present at the conference.
FPM chief said that any country deprived of municipal institutions was unable to form a free government.
Minister Bassil pointed out that the concept of municipal action aimed at finding a local administration that serves people and responds quickly to their needs.
Bassil added that the municipality was a democratic institution, noting that it was necessary to think about means to ensure these bodies’ potential to allow them assume their responsibilities.
Emphasizing the importance of administrative decentralization to avoid fallouts of political clashes on municipalities, he explained that decentralization did not consist in full independence of political power.
At another level, Bassil said that Lebanon no longer supported the idea of exclusion or marginalization of minorities, whether they were partisan or confessional minorities.
“Therefore, all parties are convinced of the need to approve a proportional electoral law,” he said.
