BEIRUT: Across Beirut Wednesday, the Lebanese public reacted to Cabinet’s agreement on a new vote law with a mix of happiness at its resolution and reservation at the resulting conclusion. Driving a battered white taxi in Sassine, 60-year-old Kamal al-Mazhoud joked that Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri must have refused a women’s quota so that President Michel Aoun couldn’t give his daughters a leg up into Parliament.

“Aoun wanted it for his daughters, Hariri and Berri don’t have daughters,” he said with a laugh.

In neighboring Gemmayzeh, Fabio, a 24-year-old Brazilian of Lebanese origin who only provided his first name, said he was generally unaware of the recent electoral developments but added that he thought a law that more equally shared power between parties would result in more engagement in the civic process.

“As of now,” Fabio said, while taking a cigarette break, “[in order to] change anything in Lebanon you need to vote for either an established power or someone with money.” He also welcomed the introduction of so-called magnetic voting cards, which he said would make voting easier for Lebanese expatriates.

Many of those interviewed by The Daily Star complained that the amendments to the vote law would be insignificant as long as the established political parties maintained the majority of power. They called for parties like Beirut Madinati, a civil society group that stood in last year’s municipal elections, to come forward in parliamentary elections scheduled for spring next year.

This sentiment was deeply held by Mazhoud, who said that “as long as the mafia is present, I will not vote. If there are other people whose programs, whose policies I can look at – because [the established parties] don’t have policies – then I will consider it,” he said.

Kamal, a 44-year-old nurse’s assistant who also chose not to provide his last name, said that “the most important thing for me was the women’s quota and the [voting] age,” referring to the proposal to lower the voting age to 18 from 21, which was ultimately not included in the law.

Khaled, a taxi driver from Mazraa, was of the opinion that “the reason [Cabinet] didn’t lower the voting age to 18 is because this is the generation that has lived through the garbage crisis ... because they are the generation born under the government’s disgusting mismanagement and they are tired of [the government] just like they are tired of the smell of garbage and the sight of Costa Brava [landfill],” he said. “If you can go into military school at 17, why should you not be able to vote?”

In Ras al-Nabeh, among butchers and sweet shops bustling with customers buying food for iftar, 80-year-old Fouad Abdel-Khaled expressed hope that the new law would move Lebanon toward a more secular society.

Abdel-Khaled’s withered face and dull green eyes seemed to grow more tired as he recalled times when he said parties stood for a political position rather than as patrons of a clientelist system.

“I remember when even the Progressive Socialist Party of Kamal Jumblatt was secular. Now everything has become religious. If you are a Christian politician then you must have Christian party,” he said.

Abdel-Khaled also noted that the new laws would have to be explained to the electorate so people can understand the process by which proportional elections take place. “We all need to go back to school,” he said.

“However, if the elections are held next May, I fear that I might not make it,” the octogenarian added, with a somber smile.

On the narrow streets of Al-Tariq al-Jadideh, Jamal Hajj Chehade, a 60-year-old unemployed doctor who recently moved back to Lebanon from the United States, blasted the government’s handling of domestic issues.

He said he hoped the new electoral districts were not gerrymandered to suit the needs of the political class.

The most important thing for him, in a point he reiterated several times, was that accountability should be enforced.

“We need the politics of accountability. We need a revolution, and I don’t care if that means guns are involved,” he said.

In Tayyouneh, Mahmoud Yassine, a 52-year-old trader from the area, praised the Cabinet’s rejection of a women’s quota, saying such a quota is anti-democratic and that, if they wanted to, women could fill all of Parliament’s 128 seats.

“These are things – women’s rights and quotas – that we speak highly of in the public sphere and are praised in educated circles, but really they don’t have support here [in Lebanon], and that’s clear in this case,” he said.

Interrupting a spirited game of backgammon to talk to The Daily Star, Yassine said he was hopeful the new electoral law would allow smaller parties to gain seats, even if only two or three, in Parliament.

“We see in Britain that [Prime Minister] Theresa May didn’t have enough seats to win a majority, and so she had to go to another party and listen to them. Even though I support the Amal Movement I am for this kind of democracy, where one side listens, and must listen, to the other,” he said.