October 11, 2026
Members of the Parliamentary Media and Communications Committee, Representatives Paula Yacoubian and Yassin Yassin, issued a statement in response to the position of Representative Waddah Sadiq regarding the committee’s recommendation regarding assigning management and operation of the cellular sector. They stressed that the recommendation does not aim to stop investment or disrupt the modernization of the network, but rather aims to suspend re-commissioning until the House of Representatives completes its investigations into the file and determines responsibilities for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, stressing the need to know the deficiencies and hold those responsible accountable before taking any new step.
The statement explained that the proposed contracts relate to appointing a private operator to manage and operate two state-owned networks under an agreement (MOA), and are not foreign investments that pump new money into the state treasury, pointing out that the operator receives its costs and profits from the revenues of the sector itself before transferring the remainder to the treasury. The two MPs also considered that the comparison made by MP Wadah Sadiq with the Syrian case was “a confusion between two different processes,” indicating that the Syrian model is based on granting a long-term operating license and huge investments to a foreign operator, while the proposal in Lebanon is nothing more than a contract for the management and operation of existing networks.
At the conclusion of their statement, Yacoubian and Yassin called on their colleague Sadiq to participate in the meetings of the Communications Committee to review the details of the sector, reiterating their ambition to attract real investments and bring in strategic partners, but exclusively “after completing reforms, strengthening governance, and defining responsibilities.”
Representative Waddah Sadiq had previously published a position on the “X” platform in which he criticized the recommendation of the Parliamentary Communications Committee, considering it a step that hinders development and prevents attracting international companies to modernize the worn-out cellular sector in Lebanon. Sadiq wondered about the feasibility of linking the preparation of new terms and conditions books and generating additional revenues for the treasury with parliamentary investigations that extend over years into old decades, pointing out that the parties of the committee members participated politically and ministerially in the successive governments that previously managed the sector, and warning that the continuation of these policies perpetuates backwardness and makes the Lebanese citizen alone bear the price of the absence of the national interest.
