THU 28 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Apr 24, 2017
Source: The Daily Star
Lebanon: New vote law initiatives in race with 1960 system
Hussein Dakroub
BEIRUT: This week promises to be one of fresh initiatives aimed at breaking the monthslong deadlock over a new electoral law that would avoid a fresh parliamentary crisis and set the stage for holding elections later this year.

In the meantime, Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai publicly endorsed holding the upcoming parliamentary elections under the disputed 1960 majoritarian law if rival factions were unable to agree on a new voting system before the May 15 deadline, when Parliament is slated to meet to extend its term for one year.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri will present an electoral draft law before the May 15 deadline aimed at resolving the crisis over a new voting system, Future Movement MP Okab Saqr said.

“Prime Minister Hariri will announce an electoral draft law before May 15 that will constitute a solution for the crisis and will probably be the last resort to overcome the crisis,” Saqr told MTV Sunday night.

He said Hariri was consulting with President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and MP Walid Jumblatt over his electoral law proposal “in order to reach consensus on it and be applicable.”

“Hariri’s proposal is not an amended version of the 1960 law and takes into account the concerns of those who had proposed the qualification vote law,” Saqr said, clearly referring to Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil’s sectarian-based qualification vote proposal that has drawn opposition from the country’s key political parties, including the Future Movement, the Amal Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the PSP.

Hariri’s proposal takes into account the issue of proportionality and provides a solution to the crisis based on the Taif Accord, Saqr said.

Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party Saturday unveiled a hybrid electoral law proposal that blends provisions of the proportional and winner-take-all systems, drawing mixed reactions from the political spectrum.

Berri is expected to announce this week an electoral law proposal based on complete proportionality in the latest official attempt to end the standoff over a new vote system to replace the 1960 formula.

Speaking to visitors at his Ain al-Tineh residence Sunday, Berri said he was making further consultations on “a new formula for an electoral law based on the application of the Constitution with regard to the known formula: the election of a Parliament on a national, non-sectarian basis, and the creation of a senate pertaining to sects.”

Referring to the PSP’s initiative, Berri said he was taking his time to sound out the parties’ reactions to it before announcing his own proposal.

Berri reiterated his opposition to an extension of Parliament’s term, but said an extension was inevitable to avert vacuum. “I am the first person against extension. No one can outdo me. But if we are forced to extend [Parliament’s term], we will swallow the extension poison in order to avoid falling into vacuum,” he said.

Although the Future Movement and other parties have not yet commented on the PSP’s vote proposal, Saqr praised it, saying it was worthy of studying it. “We are studying it positively,” he said, calling on other parties to do the same.

Under the PSP’s hybrid proposal announced at a news conference by party official Hisham Nassereddine, voters would elect 64 MPs [half of Parliament’s members] on a winner-take-all system across 26 electoral constituents, similar to the system of the current 1960 electoral law.

The remaining seats would be elected on proportionality in 11 electoral constituents based on administrative districts.

“Today, we presented this draft law which we hope will be discussed by all political parties. We are ready to reach an understanding on formulas that can rescue the country from the political crisis,” former Minister Ghazi Aridi from Jumblatt’s parliamentary Democratic Gathering bloc told the news conference at the PSP’s office in Beirut. Noting that the PSP’s proposal is based on partnership and respect of diversity, Aridi said: “What matters before May 15 is to reach an understanding on a new electoral law on whose basis we go to holding elections.”

He restated the PSP’s rejection of a new extension of Parliament’s term, which has been extended in 2013 and 2014. “We don’t want an extension [of Parliament’s term], nor a vacuum ... All of us are in an open workshop and open consultations in order to reach an agreement [on a vote law] before May 15.”

Aridi said elections could be conducted under the 1960 law if no agreement was reached on a new vote system. “If we don’t reach an agreement [on a vote law] by May 15, what shall we do?” Aridi said, adding that Rai and some political parties had declared that in the absence of a new electoral law, the valid law [1960 law] should be adopted to govern the upcoming elections.

Rai said it was not shameful that if no agreement was reached on a new electoral law to hold the elections under the 1960 sectarian-based majoritarian law that divides Lebanon into small- and medium-sized constituencies used in the last elections in 2009.

“We are praying and calling so that political powers, parliamentary blocs and the government can issue a new [electoral] law that satisfies all the country’s components,” Rai said in Sunday’s sermon in his seat in Bkirki, north of Beirut.

“But if, for some reason, a new electoral law was not approved, it is not shameful to acknowledge failure and proceed with parliamentary elections in accordance with the current valid [1960] law, with all the technical extension of Parliament’s term it requires,” he added.

Aoun has issued a stern warning against a new extension of Parliament’s term, or holding elections under the 1960 law by pledging to eliminate hurdles blocking an agreement on a new vote system.

On April 12, he suspended Parliament’s meeting for one month to prevent a new extension of its term, thus averting a fresh political deadlock for now.

Aoun’s move came in response to Berri’s decision to convene Parliament on April 13 to extend the body’s term for one year. Following the suspension of Parliament’s meeting, Berri decided to convene the next session on May 15 to give rival factions additional time to agree on a new electoral law.

Bassil, the FPM leader, praised the PSP’s proposal. “Regardless of our opinion about it [the proposal], it is a positive move and a step forward,” Bassil said in a tweet.

State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Qanso, who represents the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in the Cabinet, criticized the PSP’s proposal. “We have presented in 1997 a draft electoral law based on full proportionality with Lebanon as a single electoral constituency,” Qanso told The Daily Star Sunday. “We believe that a hybrid law will not achieve the desired goals that a full proportional law will.”



 
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