Beirut: In a rare recent meeting, Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF), and his arch-rival Walid Junblatt, the chief of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), agreed to uphold a united position on a hybrid electoral law for the planned 2017 parliamentary elections.
The development caught everyone by surprise, as competing factions remained sharply divided over what kind of voting system parliament will eventually adopt, presumably to replace the winner-take-all 1960 model.
Geagea and Junblatt shared little in common and actually harboured visceral dislikes of each other, the result of the 1975-1990 Civil War, which saw the two men fighting on opposite sides. Still, they apparently met a few days ago at the residence of deputy Neameh Tohme, a PSP member, to settle various contentions, including the presidential election as well as the contemplated new electoral law. Junblatt prevented Geagea from winning the presidential elections on April 23, 2014, when he ushered in Henri Helou, a Trojan Horse who managed to gather 16 blocking votes. Geagea was shocked when his erstwhile March 14 ally, former Prime Minister Sa‘ad Hariri, nominated Marada chief Sulaiman Franjieh in December 2015, withdrew from the race on January 18, 2016, and backed General Michel Aoun instead, all of which hardened the process.
Ever since, and although the presidential contention remained in limbo, Lebanese elites opted to toy with the next parliamentary elections, if for no other reason than to remove the extension blemish, given that deputies felt no compunction to extend their own terms in office in 2013 and again in 2014.
According to LF deputy George Adwan, Geagea and Junblatt underscored the need to settle differences and adopt the hybrid voting system, which is also endorsed by the Future Movement, as a first step to help fill the presidential void.
Interestingly, the three parties (LF, PSP and Future) agreed that the time was long overdue to replace the 1960 winner-take-all law, although the joint parliamentary committees entrusted with the task to find an alternative has, to date, failed to agree on a unified voting system. Instead of developing, debating, and voting on a new law — that was presumably what elected officials were expected to perform in a democratising country — they referred the thorny issue to “National Dialogue” leaders, who gathered 41 times to resolve pending disputes.
The next “National Dialogue” session, expected to meet on three successive days on August 2, 3 and 4, will try to reach a package deal that includes the presidential election, a new electoral legislation and even a new government.
It was unclear which proposal would prevail although the hybrid law, which is based on proportional representation and a winner-take-all system, carried some traction. The LF, PSP and Future proposed that 60 deputies be elected on the basis of proportional representation and the remaining 68 in a winner-take-all system. Speaker Nabih Berri suggested a different hybrid law, which called for the election of 64 lawmakers on the basis of proportional representation and the 64 remaining ones under the winner-take-all method. Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement opted for full proportionality.
