Parliamentary elections set for May 6

POLL DATE SET FOR MAY 6; PARLIAMENT EXTENDS TERM TILL MAY 20

Current term of parliament will end on May 20 as rival parties reach agreement on electoral law |

Lebanon expects to hold a parliamentary election on May 6, 2018 and parliament will extend its current term until May 20 that year, information minister Melhem Riachy told journalists during a cabinet session yesterday.

Lebanon’s rival parties reached agreement on Tuesday on an electoral law, staving off a political crisis and paving the way for a parliamentary election. Lebanon’s inability to agree on a new law has prevented it from holding parliamentary elections for years and the parliament’s term has been extended twice.

The last time Lebanese voted in a parliamentary election was in 2009.

Yesterday, the Cabinet approved the new law, which will be based on proportionality and divide the country into 15 voting districts.

The government will submit the law to parliament tomorrow for debate and approval, with only four days left before the parliament’s term expires.

The new law is widely viewed as an improved version of the 1960 law with elites commanding loyal sectarian voter bases maintaining their positions.

Christian voters seem to have gained slightly under the new law as they will now be able to elect over 55 of their 68 deputies — ten more than they said they were able to vote under the old law.

The losers are civil society groups that challenge domination by the elites.

Lebanese foreign minister and son-in-law to the president, Jibran Bassil, touted the agreement as a victory that would “greatly improve representation” but vowed that one day Christians would be able to elect all of their 64 deputies.

Druze leader and head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), Walid Junblatt, criticised the proportional representation law as being too “complicated”.

While Wael Abu Faour, of the PSP, called it “the worst possible law” — Druze MPs have promised not to block its passing in parliament.

Under the new law, Beirut would be split into two districts, instead of the current three.

A single seat, reserved for ‘Christian Minorities,’ which used to fall under Beirut III, will now be attached to Beirut I, which includes the predominantly Christian neighbourhoods of Ashrafieh, Rmeil, Saifi and Medawwar.

Beirut II, one of the 15 new districts, will include the predominately Muslim neighbourhoods of Bashoura, Marfa, Zokak Al Blat, Mazraa, Ras Beirut, Ain Al Mreisseh, Minet Al Hosn and Mousaitbeh.

One of the trickiest subjects was agreeing on how to gerrymander boundaries of an electoral constituency to favour one party over another on each electoral list.

This largely resembles the system of the old law but with a new threshold determined by an ‘electoral quotient’ (the total number of voters in any given district divided by the number of seats).

Under the new law, the ‘preferred vote’ will be counted in the adminstrative district instead of the electoral district — a key demand of Bassil’s Free Patriotic Movement Party.

Preferred candidate

This means a voter can indicate their preferred candidate on their electoral ballot, granting that candidate an advantage during the distribution of seats on winners.

According to the 1960 voting law, parliament seats are allocated by religious sects, a provision which Lebanon’s most prominent Christian parties wanted to amend.

Bassil has spearheaded the campaign for ‘greater Christian representation’.

Powerful Shiite groups like the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Amal were happy with the status quo because proportional representation or the winnertakes-all system would give it potential control of parliament due to its large numbers.