Ex-Premier Saad Hariri slammed efforts to adopt a parliamentary elections law based on proportionality, saying the threat of Hizbullah’s arms closes the door to democratic competition.

In an interview published in al-Mustaqbal daily on Sunday, Hariri said: “Proportionality is a means for people or political movements that do not enjoy absolute majority in a certain region to be represented in parliament based on their proportional size.”

Opposition MP Marwan Hamadeh accused the March 8 forces of seeking to circumvent the parliament by pressuring President Michel Suleiman into signing a bill on the $5.9 billion extra-budgetary spending of 2011.

In remarks to An Nahar daily published Friday, Hamadeh, who is part of the March 14 coalition, said: “Pressuring the president into signing an urgent bill for the first time since the (adoption of) the Taef (accord) circumvents the parliament which has been initially established to approve financial draft-laws.”

Prime Minister Najib Miqati is seeking to maintain stability in Lebanon by disassociating the country from the crisis in Syria.

Sources close to Miqati told An Nahar newspaper that the premier and his cabinet don’t accept any violation of freedoms especially those of journalists.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s press office denied on Saturday an al-Manar TV report that Qoreitem mansion was sold or donated to the French embassy.

The office said in a press release that the report by the mouthpiece of Hizbullah about the mansion being sold for 700 million dollars was a lie.

The March 14-led opposition held Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui and those who support him responsible for preventing the security forces and authorities from obtaining the telecom data in their probe into assassination attempts.

A senior security official told al-Joumhouria newspaper that acquiring the telecom data for one day isn’t sufficient as the competent security authorities need to frequently analyze and follow up the data in their investigations.

Several Lebanese leaders on Wednesday contacted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to condemn the assassination attempt he escaped earlier in the day, as President Michel Suleiman called for “intensifying the investigations in order to unveil and arrest the perpetrators.”

Former prime minister Saad Hariri telephoned Geagea, deploring the attempt on his life and describing it as the latest in a long series of political assassinations in Lebanon.

March 14 opposition MP Marwan Hamadeh said on Tuesday that the latest debate on a draft electoral law emerged to the surface to “cover up the continues scandals hammering the cabinet.”

Hamadeh slammed in comments published in An Nahar the efforts exerted by Lebanese officials to drop the 1960 law, which was agreed upon by all the political forces in the previous elections.

The cabinet has approved draft-laws to conduct an audit on extra-budgetary spending made between 2006 and 2010 by the governments of ex-Premiers Fouad Saniora and Saad Hariri.

The approval came during an eight-hour session held at Baabda Palace under President Michel Suleiman which also witnessed a solution to the controversial electricity plan.

The head of the parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan slammed Finance Minister Mohammed al-Safadi’s report on the extra-budgetary spending of the governments of former Premiers Fouad Saniora and Saad Hariri, saying that he omitted various forms of revenue, such as grants and donations.

He told As Safir newspaper in remarks published on Wednesday: “It appears that the report is aimed at allowing a settlement to be reached over extra-budgetary spending.”

The cabinet is set to discuss on Wednesday the detailed accounts of the extra-budgetary spending made by the governments of ex-PMs Fouad Saniora and Saad Hariri between 2006 and 2010.

The information that is detailed by the finance ministry in five separate draft-laws was circulated to cabinet ministers in an appendix for discussion by the government in addition to the 76-item agenda.