BEIRUT: The current 128 seats in Parliament are up 29 on the pre-Taif Accord era but with elections looming, much talk has revolved around moving specific seats from one voting district to another.

Local leaders have been given a rare chance to determine their own fate without orders from regional or international backers, either East or West. However, the negotiations over the nature of the law for future elections and details such as moving seats have still bogged down debate for months.

The seats in question are designated for Maronite Christians, part of a long-held desire by major Christian parties who say key constituencies are marginalized by local demographics. With Maronites currently holding the largest share of Parliament seats, with 34 MPs, the root of the back and forth discussions have focused on how the two biggest Christian political parties – the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement – can expand their control in Parliament.

Bsharri is the stronghold of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea while Batroun is the hometown of Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil.

Rather than focusing on how many seats they can move from the West Bekaa, Tripoli or Baalbeck into traditionally LF or FPM voting areas such as Batroun, Byblos and Bsharri, the two main Christian parties should look at one of three options.

SEAT SHIFTINGIf this proposal goes through, it would take the only Maronite seat away from the roughly 29,000 registered Christian voters in the West Bekaa, leaving them with a single Orthodox Christian MP to represent them. In turn, this would boost the number of representatives for the 17,183 Bsharri constituents who went to the polls in 2009 to three MPs.

Although from the simple numbers it appears to further the perceived marginalization of constituencies the parties looking to move seats are claiming to be representing. However, there are some advocates for the shift who cite the low voter turnout of Christians in the West Bekaa as reason enough to move one of the two seats reserved for them.

If a Maronite seat is taken from the West Bekaa, its local Christians could legitimately ask why it should not be replaced with the Catholic seat from Baalbeck.

In the 2009 Parliamentary election, West Bekaa MP Robert Ghanem won the seat with 35,329 votes. Ghanem’s campaign received around 50 percent of the area’s votes, the highest result out of the mainly Sunni West Bekaa region’s MPs. This contrasts with the Zgharta district in the same election that saw 19,227 votes for the area’s steadfast leader and Marada Movement head MP Sleiman Frangieh. However, under the new proposals, Ghanem’s seat is one that the two Christian parties have an eye to move.

While those proposing the movement of seats claim to be “restoring Christians’ rights,” there are some 25,000 Christians in areas such as Nabatieh, Tyre and Bint Jbeil also without a seat for their sect. Interestingly enough, this has not been widely discussed by the two parties who claim to be defending their faith. With this in mind, the selective movement of seats could easily backfire on the parties that undertake it.

With a system that looks to push certain Christian MPs to safe seats while overlooking others, it is entirely possible that local Christian communities in areas such as Akkar and the West Bekaa will feel further sidelined and may eventually look to relocate.

By taking away the Maronite seat in Tripoli, the powers are signaling a further division between Christians and Muslims. Under the proposal, although somewhat symbolic, it would in effect tell the numerous Christians of Akkar that they are living in isolation and don’t warrant fair representation.

On the face of it, the selective seat-moving proposal just further carves up a country that is already treading on thin ice.

But, the issues with the proposals are not just present in areas where Christians are the minority but also affect inter-Christian political struggles. With the LF-FPM pushing the moving of seats and having a say – if it goes ahead – over where the extra MPs are added, they can effectively poach marginal Christian seats from rivals. For example, the Metn district has long had a plurality of Christian candidates that are now threatened under the powerful LF-FPM alliance.

ALTERNATIVE VISIONSHowever, other – potentially more effective – proposals exist. Instead of moving the seat and further isolating the minority sect in the West Bekaa, it would be possible to move seat(s) of Muslim MPs from majority districts to areas where they are a minority and currently have no representation.

Zgharta is a case in point. The area’s approximately 8,000 Sunni voters have not a single MP to represent their sect. As several areas with a large Sunni majority have several Sunni seats, it’s possible to shift one of these to Zgharta. This would both enfranchise the local Sunni population and also give local Christian voters a strong say in this MP.

The same applies for the Koura district, which also has around 8,000 Sunni voters with no designated MP.

Not only would this go some way to correcting the perceived marginalization of Christians in Parliament, it would also give them the same say in electing some Muslim MPs as is the case with many Christian MPs in predominantly Muslim areas.

If this proposal doesn’t tickle the fancy of the powers in Parliament, another option exists – returning to the Taif Accord. Although the Constitution, and many subsequently agreed upon decisions, tend to be overlooked by politicians these days, the Taif Accord is an easy method to correct the issue of “misrepresentation.”

DOWNSIZE PARLIAMENT Prior to the Taif, there were 99 seats in Parliament – 54 Christian MPs and 45 Muslim MPs. In order, to create a balance after the agreement in 1989, the Muslims were given nine additional seats bringing the total to 108. Then, the Syrian government added 20 MPs – 10 Christian for areas where the sect had little to no say in the outcome – during their 15-year occupation of the country that ended in 2005.

Therefore, rather than move seats from one place to another, lawmakers could reduce the number of MPs to the original 108. This would take care of some of the now argued over MPs placed by Syria’s former Interior Minister and longtime intelligence head for Lebanon Ghazi Kanaan and his local backers for Syria’s agenda in the mid-’90s.

Farfetched it is, but the formation of a Senate could be the key to liberating MPs from the focus on religious rights and allow them to look to more important national issues such as fixing chronic electricity cuts, water shortages and aging infrastructure.

A Senate based on sectarian allocation could allow for a more secular Parliament to emerge that would actually be able to roll up their sleeves and fix the country’s many woes without worrying about religious matters.

However, if this proposed moving of three Maronite seats goes ahead it reinforces the idea that the country is returning to the “Orthodox Law” proposal that calls for each sect to elect its own representatives. The proposal’s support has waxed and waned but could again be on the rise.

In that case, it would be clear to the nation’s voters and all Lebanese nationals that the political class has given up hope of true coexistence and is instead building a federal state.

These concerns are not meant to attack the LF-FPM alliance, as many have been doing since the first day of its formation. It is meant to ring a bell that the voters and the Lebanese people are not (for the most part) fully blind to gerrymandering.

The sad truth of the whole debate for many Lebanese is that, in the year 2017, the political parties are still discussing whether or not you can run for office or vote for your choice of candidate in national elections based on whether you make the sign of the Cross or recite Quranic verses. – The Daily Star

Statistics taken from International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the Lebanese Interior Ministry results of 2009 Parliamentary elections.