Kataeb MP Elias Hankache on Tuesday stressed that the state budget must be funded through reasonable sources of revenue, not by hiking taxes or imposing measures that directly impact the citizens.

“The government is aware of the sources of squandering, notably tax and customs evasion,” Hankache told said in an interview on NBN.

Hankache noted that the main problem in the country lies in the citizens’ distrust in the ruling authority because they haven’t seen a real control of squandering before resorting to options that affect them directly.

"Before cutting the salaries of public sector employees and reducing their benefits, the government must first purge the state institutions of superfluous posts and unproductive employees."

Hankache said that no serious actions were made to fight corruption and to introduce administrative reforms, warning that CEDRE funds will end up being wasted if no drastic change is made in Lebanon.

"Reforms must be undertaken before opting for indebtedness," he said.

The lawmaker stressed that the Kataeb party has established a new political culture according to which the authority rules and the opposition objects to wrongdoings.

"It is time for Lebanon to implement real accountability in the Parliament,” he said.

Turning to the appeal presented by the Kataeb party to the Constitutional Council to contest the government's power plan, Hankache revealed that the endorsed law encloses several law violations, reiterating that the challenge pushes for transparency and supervision throughout all of the plan's phases.

“We’ve detected in the plan an attempt to circumvent the laws," he said. "Through the appeal we submitted, we are trying to make the plan productive and benefitial for Lebanon."