PSP Says Charbel Proposed to it Vote Law Plans Based on Winner-Takes-All System

The Progressive Socialist Party said Tuesday that Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel proposed to it several electoral draft-laws based on the winner-takes-all system in an attempt to resolve the dispute on the Orthodox Gathering plan.

“Charbel has several electoral ideas that are based on the winner-takes-all system,” MP Akram Shehayyeb told reporters after meeting with the caretaker minister along with several other officials from MP Walid Jumblat's PSP.

“We have never said that we reject the hybrid system and we are ready to discuss any plan that guarantees fair elections,” he said when asked by a reporter why negotiations on a draft-law that combines the winner-takes-all and proportional representation systems had gone back to the starting point.

Shehayyeb, who is also a member of Jumblat's National Struggle Front bloc, accused Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement of preventing the consultations between the rival parties on a vote law from moving forward.

“Two essential parties – Hizbullah and the FPM - haven't made so far any proposal on the hybrid plan,” he said, adding that “they stuck to their original demands from day one.”

Asked about four-days of consecutive sessions that Speaker Nabih Berri has called for starting Wednesday, Shehayyeb said: “We made our stance clear yesterday. We won't attend the session which has the Orthodox Gathering as the sole item on its agenda.”

Berri's move came after rival MPs failed during a meeting of parliament's bureau on Monday to agree on the items that should be placed on the agenda.

The Orthodox plan is the only draft-law approved by the joint parliamentary committees. But it is severely criticized by al-Mustaqbal bloc, the National Struggle Front and the March 14 alliance's independent Christian MPs who have announced that they would boycott the sessions.

The proposal considers Lebanon a single electoral district and allows each sect to vote for its own MPs under a proportional representation system.

But it “brings back extremism and ends moderation,” Shehayyeb said.

Caretaker Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour, who is also a PSP official, described the plan as “a real threat to national unity.”

It would create more divisions among the Lebanese if adopted, he said following talks with Caretaker Premier Najib Miqati.