Report: Bassil Assembles New Electoral Law Format
A new three-party panel has emerged after a previous four-party committee failed to find a new electoral law for the upcoming parliamentary elections, amid reports circulating that Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil is preparing a fresh format which he plans to suggest when all endeavors in that regard collapse, al-Akhbar daily reported on Friday.
The new panel is comprised of Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil and Prime Minister Saad Hariri or director of the premier's office Nader Hariri, said the daily.
The reports said that discussions are focusing on two formats that have been deliberated previously and include the so-called hybrid law, which met the consent of al-Mustaqbal and the despise of AMAL and Hizbullah, and a second format that al-Mustaqbal has refused while Hizbullah and AMAL approved of.
According to sources familiar with the work of the panel, the discussions are not expected to record serious breakthrough. However they assured that the stalemate will not continue.
Shall the negotiators fail to reach common ground, Basil is planning to submit a new project for the electoral law which he works on preparing, they said.
Prominent sources from the Free Patriotic Movement have however warned that continued failure to agree on a new law will push the FPM to wage a political battle, and to substitute its “calm rhetoric with verbal attacks against all parties it sees involved in obstructing the process.”
The political parties are bickering over amending the current election law which divides seats among the different religious sects.
The country has not organized parliamentary elections since 2009 and the legislature has since extended its own mandate twice.
While al-Mustaqbal Movement has rejected that the electoral law be fully based on proportional representation, arguing that Hizbullah's arms would prevent serious competition in the party's strongholds, Druze leader MP Walid Jumblat has totally rejected proportional representation, even within a hybrid law, warning that it would “marginalize” the minority Druze community.
The political parties are meanwhile discussing several formats of a so-called hybrid law that mixes proportional representation with the winner-takes-all system.
Source: Naharnet
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