Kataeb to Rally against Taxes outside Parliament

The student and youth department of the Kataeb Party on Friday called for a protest outside parliament during the July 18-19 legislative session.

“Once again the ruling political class tries to pass the taxes bill that it had failed to pass in March due to the Lebanese people's pressure and the opposition MPs, who stood in the face of the ruling class to prevent it from further impoverishing the Lebanese,” the department said in a statement.

“Seeing as together we can confront the ruling class and stop the crime that it intends to commit against every Lebanese, we call for staging sit-ins on Tuesday and Wednesday,” it urged.

Kataeb, civil society groups, the Progressive Socialist Party and the National Liberal Party had organized a similar protest against a proposed tax hike in March.

The ruling class argues that hiking taxes is necessary to fund a long-stalled new wage scale for public employees and the armed forces, but opponents of such a move have called on authorities to find alternative funding sources.

Kataeb chief MP Sami Gemayel has said that “the new wage scale should be funded through putting an end to the squandering and theft of public money and through introducing real reform and change... not through hiking taxes.”