Beirut: Less than two weeks after the Lebanese parliament convened its joint committees to approve one of the most controversial electoral laws, one that threatened to stroke the country’s ephemeral sectarian fabric, wily politicians buried it.
Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, declared that the so-called “Orthodox Gathering Law,” or the Elie Ferzli Proposal, so-named after the pro-Syrian former minister whose writ included a putative self-appointed mandate to ensure proper Christian representation, was no longer valid.
“The era of the Orthodox law has ended thanks to the stance of President Michel Sulaiman and the independent March 14 deputies who have obstructed this suicidal proposal,” Jumblatt told the Al Safir newspaper on Thursday.
Neither Al Safir, nor anyone else for that matter, reminded Jumblatt that it was his withdrawal from the 2009 winning parliamentary coalition that led to the coup d’etat against Sa’ad Hariri’s government.
Still, a day before the Druze chieftain’s statement, Speaker Nabih Berri withdrew from consideration his own hybrid proposal that called for 64 lawmakers to be elected based on a winner-takes-all system (piggy-backing on the universally rejected 1960 Law) and 64 to be elected under proportional representation. For his part, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deliberated adopting proportional representation with Lebanon as a single district, and called on rivals in the March 14 coalition to accept his offer, which would prove once and for all whether they enjoyed majority support if they prevailed at the ballot-box. Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun seconded.
In the midst of this interminable posturing, Sulaiman discussed with former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ongoing efforts to reach an agreement on a law that presumably ensured fair representation, and that respected two fundamentals: the Constitution and the National Pact.
News reports asserted that the president tackled the now tabled draft painstakingly researched by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Fouad Butros, who headed a 2006 commission that recommended the adoption of a system combining proportional representation with a winner-takes-all system.
There was even talk of returning to the two-month old cabinet plan, based on proportionality and 13 electoral districts, which Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea rejected. It was worth recalling that Geagea offered an amended version of the Boutros Option, 50 electoral districts that did not change the distribution of districts, or proportional voting.
Although every politician dismissed claims that their private goal was to delay elections now technically scheduled for June 9, the rationale to postpone such elections rested on two core reasons: to change any election law required a constitutional amendment, which necessitated the approval of the Constitutional Council, along with the signature of the president if the legislation was approved in parliament.
In the event, the slow-moving Constitutional Council was unlikely to approve a law that threatened the spirit of the National Pact. Equally important in the post-Taif framework was the imprimatur of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.
In order for any law to even reach the Constitutional Council, Najeeb Mikati must sign it, followed by an approval of the Ministry of Interior decree that “organised” said elections — both by a March 9 deadline. In fact, the prime minister reiterated that the only elections that could be held on time, assuming that he signed off on the decree that implemented the current law, would essentially mean that the government was committed to hold polls based on the existing 1960 regulations as amended in 2009.
In case the premier refused to sign the decree and thus postponed elections, Parliament’s term would expire on June 20, when Lebanon was guaranteed to enter a political vacuum — at the height of yet another failed tourist season — while the Cabinet assumed the role of a caretaker government.
Few wished to anticipate such an outcome, although such a possibility — which would severely delay the 2014 presidential elections too — ought not be ruled out. Under the circumstances, such a fait-accompli would mean one of two things. First, a long-term freeze of political life until such time when Hezbollah preferred a “constituent assembly” convened to reorganise Lebanon’s polity, in other words, until a new Taif Accords was negotiated.
Second, until a regionally inspired and locally motivated civil war plunged the country into a fresh abyss, which could not be neglected given the spillover effects of the Syrian crises.
Still, a few days before the next deadline — for the Prime Minister to sign the decree to convene elections — it was increasingly clear that no law stood a chance of being passed.
Lebanon remained one of those rare countries where political experimentations seldom ended. In 2013, politicians were not just discussing a putative electoral law, although that was what many concentrated upon to win an edge in case parliamentary elections were held on time. Rather, most concentrated on the post-civil war, post-Taif arrangements, revealing that no two politicians trusted each other. A genuine power-struggle, coupled with a perpetual tug-of-war over leadership, highlighted how poorly served the citizens of this limping democracy were.
