Report: Kataeb Says New Vote Law 'Masked' Return to 1960

The Kataeb party slammed Wednesday the newly approved proportional representation electoral law as a “political fraud” describing it as a “masked bid to return to the 1960” majoritarian law, al-Joumhouria daily reported.

“What happened is a political fraud and a masked return to the 1960 law. The vote law was tailored to suit the interests of some people in power,” a prominent Kataeb source told the daily in an interview.

Describing the law as full of “negatives” he said on condition of anonymity: “Proportionality has been drained from its genuine meaning in favor of an evident political deal.”

The source pointed out that the party will make a detailed and clear stance in the coming 24 hours to pinpoint the authority's vows to the people and how it “failed to meet them.”

Political parties intensified their meetings on Tuesday and reached an agreement in the afternoon on the 15-district parliamentary electoral law and the cabinet is expected to approve it during its session on Wednesday.

The draft law splits Beirut into two districts and moves the minorities seat to the first district. The first district contains Ashrafieh, Rmeil, Saifi and Medawwar while the second contains Bashoura, Marfa, Zokak al-Blat, Mazraa, Ras Beirut, Ain el-Mreisseh, Minet el-Hosn and Mousaitbeh.

The parties also agreed that any electoral list has to reach a certain threshold to become eligible to win seats. The threshold is determined by the so-called electoral quotient: the total number of voters in a certain district divided by the number of seats.

The so-called preferred vote will meanwhile be counted in the administrative district and not in the electoral district, a demand that the Free Patriotic Movement had long called for.

An agreement was also reached on other technical details while no agreement was reached on the issues of “allowing the armed forces to vote, lowering the voting age and introducing a women's quota.”

The parties also agreed that expat voting will be introduced in the next elections and that the diaspora will be granted six seats.

President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri are meanwhile supposed to agree on the elections date, as per the agreement.

Druze leader MP Walid Jumblat and the Marada Movement were the first to criticize the law on Tuesday. Jumblat described it as “complicated”, while the Marada rejected the mechanism of counting the so-called “preferred vote.”