Reports | 25 05 2020
In today's episode, we conclude our last meeting with Dr. Elias Warda, the former Minister of Energy and oil in the interim government, to end the talk about his experience in working with the government and its secrets, and the excesses that he witnessed.
Elias Warda talked about the mismanagement in the government budget and mentioned several examples, including spending money on military actions although it is dedicated to other things, "When the coast battles started; half a million dollars was requested from the government to support the battles, so during my meeting with the deputy defense minister I told him that the money was earmarked for supporting the government not for fighting, and this what the Qatari Emir said and stressed on, so I asked him whether we play a role in the battle? is it part of the strategy of defense staff? he said no, I asked him, do we have the possibility to supply the battle? and he said no, I asked him, do we have the possibility to stop the battle. he answered no! I said, so why would we supply this battle? Why would we support that fiction who decided to open the battle alone? especially since this was repeated more than once in the coast battles specifically, to open a battle and spend on it from the government's budget, and then the Syrian regime recovers the same areas again! "
Warda explained: "The money was taken for the military from the Ministry of energy budget which is 8%, despite the fact that the Emir of Qatar stressed that these funds are not for the militarization at all, though the finance minister did not agree to grant the Energy Department only 2% of the budget, which means that we got only million dollars out of a million euros! so we were forced to seek support from the Qatari Ministry of oil, even if it was debts, as I was aware that if we succeeded, we could pay our debt, because the refinery would have produced 3 thousand barrels, which means that the amount of daily profit would be 20 thousand dollars up minimum, and this result came after we brought consultants and specialists, and they did an accurate research and studies."
The other thing that he criticized was "to provide financial support for hospitals owned by certain political groups, and that was not the problem itself, as long as the hospital will serve the citizens all of them, but the problem was that the profits that come out of these hospitals will also go to fund Project-specific category, rather than entering in the general budget of the government. "
About dissolving the interim government in July 2014, Warda said: "I submitted my resignation before the dismissal of the government, in order to support dissolving it and I was the only minister who retired and I announced my willingness to take responsibility for the mistakes that took place, being part of the team, after I tried to correct the errors in vain."
Warda mentioned remarkable incident took place during the government meetings, "in a meeting in front of the General Authority, the head of the government justified the abuses that he was blackmailed by certain political group within the coalition since the beginning of his appointment, and that was said in front of all the members of the General Authority!", And Warda see that "This explains a lot of things, such as the issue of the oil company, and this is a real disaster, because who is being blackmailed once, can be blackmailed again. "
He said: "after the government have been dissolved, I made promises of a new government and new characters’ advent, and that the current government will remain for conducting of business, and Riad Hijab was of the names that is proposed, so we stayed in the government in the hope that it would be succeed this time, and we did not care about the political identity of those who come, it was important for us to have the ability and the willingness to take responsibility. "
"any dissent is convicted and a historic mistake in any block, these were my political convictions earlier, but that's what happened, so I made promises to be interested in the claims of democracy bloc in the coalition, to be surprised later that the head of the interim government himself has been re-elected! And the justification was that there is a conspiracy against the coalition and the opposition can’t be told! so the head of the government must remain the same in order to thwart this conspiracy, and when we rejected it, he assured that it will be different than before, with putting rules define the powers of the president, and to use an administrative expert for the Secretary-General site of the government, despite the presence of important experts in the government ".
He continued "after the new elections, which I was not invited to it by the prime minister, I got 54 votes out of 56, and then a decision was issued by the Legal Committee of the coalition, that all of the candidates will be set as ministers, for the lack of alternatives, but nevertheless we haven’t been invited to any meeting, "he adds," then through my work period, the Department of energy has provided fifty jobs has to do with electricity and alternative energy in Hama, Aleppo and Homs, Idlib, despite a weak potential does not exceed one million dollars, and I promised to work on the refinery issue, and met the Turkish Minister of Energy, we preceded the winter, and put a project to buy gas in the autumn, in an attempt to serve the people and provide them with gas at half the value traded in Syria, and we needed time for a hundred or fifty thousand dollars for this project from the government, but they refused to provide us."