Berri says elections to be held on time, 'no delay, no postponement, no extension'
Kataeb Party leader MP Sami Gemayel told Friday Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that the right of the Lebanese expatriates to vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections would not "isolate" the Shiites. "The ones isolating them from the rest of the Lebanese are those who are rejecting the logic of the state and holding onto their arms," he said.
Gemayel said that Berri's opinion about the expats' voting does not grant him the right to refuse discussing it in Parliament in a plenary session.
"The Parliament is the body that represents all Lebanese and it consequently has the right to decide".
Berri had said if the expats want to vote for the 128 seats, they would have to come to Lebanon.
The current electoral law only allows expats to vote for six newly-introduced seats in parliament. Sixty-five MPs -- forming a parliamentary majority -- demanded to amend the law in order to allow expats to vote for all 128 seats.
Hezbollah and Amal argue that they do not enjoy the same campaigning freedom that other parties enjoy abroad and are objecting the amendment.
MP Ghassan Skaff suggested the elections be postponed for a few weeks in order for the expats to come vote in Lebanon, but Berri refused. He said The elections will not be postponed "not even for one day."
"The elections will be held on time. No delay, no postponement, no extension," he said.
24 October 2025, 15:54
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confused racism ↴
Letter to the editor: Gaining civil rights for Shias should be top priority
Posted February 5, 2015
Noam Chomsky says that Shias are the majority of Lebanon’s population, such that, if free elections were held and if Shias threw all their support to Hezbollah, it could form the government entirely on its own. Yet Article 24 of the Lebanese Constitution reserves half of parliamentary seats for Christians, who number, by my own guess, around a quarter of the population.
Here, in a nutshell, you have the Shia sense of grievance that makes Hezbollah so dynamic a force in politics, and yet also the solution to two problems.
Hezbollah militancy and Lebanese political instability would both be ameliorated if Hezbollah put its main effort into gaining civil rights and political representation for Lebanon’s Shias – and the U.S. could be on the right side of history by aiding that cause.
So go ahead and tell me why not, please.
Christopher C. Rushlau
