BEIRUT: As lawmakers from rival coalitions struggled to reach common ground over a new electoral law Thursday, their strategists spent hours dissecting the laws proposed to determine which best suited their party lines. With most parties rejecting the 1960 law, they have spent the last few months mulling an electoral law that all parties would support. Due to their failure to reach consensus on alternative legislation, Parliament’s mandate – set to expire on June 20 – is expected to be extended.

 

All the proposals discussed so far have focused on power-sharing compromises between rival political parties in case an election does take place, rather than adhere to democratic principles, political analysts told The Daily Star.

 

There have been at least six electoral laws proposed in the past year, but none have garnered approval from all major political parties. Just this week, two different suggestions were thrown on the table.

 

One was pitched at the last minute by the normally opposed Lebanese Forces and Future Movement, which put their differences aside to jointly propose a draft just before a Parliament session this week was scheduled to put the controversial Orthodox Gathering law to a vote.

 

Their new proposal calls for electing 68 MPs based on a winner-takes-all system and 60 MPs based on a proportional representation system. The former would be used in the 26 districts similar to 1960 law, while proportional representation would be adopted in six governorates across the country.

 

Countering the hybrid formula presented by the March 14 coalition, Speaker Nabih Berri, who has been chairing the parliamentary subcommittee tasked with studying draft electoral laws, has made his own proposal.

 

Berri suggested holding elections that would see half of Parliament elected according to the Orthodox Gathering formula, allowing every sect to elect its own MPs in one nationwide district, and the other half based on the winner-takes-it-all 1960 law.

 

Albert Kostanian, a Kataeb party politburo member, was one of the strategists studying the different proposals to gauge their effect on his party in the upcoming elections.

 

Kostanian said even if rival coalitions agreed on Berri’s proposal, a great deal of logistical work would be necessary to implement the law on election day.

 

“As an idea it is good, but it is still immature if you want to put it into practice, a lot of work will be needed,” said Kostanian.

 

But given the Sunni and Druze rejection of the Orthodox Gathering formula, lawmakers are more focused on March 14’s hybrid law proposal and its districting scheme.

 

“We have no problem with attending a Parliament session to discuss this draft, but we cannot back this draft proposal because we have objections to its districting,” Kostanian said.

 

Sami Nader, an election expert and Saint Joseph University professor, criticized lawmakers’ latest attempt to reach a deal on an electoral law, saying that political parties seemed to only care about the number of seats they have to win in Parliament.

 

“The proposal made by the Lebanese Forces and the Future Movement and the other proposals made so far have only focused on creating a formula for sharing parliamentary seats between political parties and not on sound democratic principles,” Nader told The Daily Star.

 

Nader argued that the LF and Future Movement’s latest pitch was an attempt to salvage an alliance threatened if the Orthodox Gathering proposal was put to a vote.

 

“They saved themselves by reaching a consensus on how to share the seats in the Parliament,” said Nader.

 

The professor said the advantages of the hybrid law proposal were that it boosted Christian representation in Parliament, allowed their parties to elect more than 50 MPs, and introduced proportional representation.

 

“Before Christians used to elect 32 or 34 seats, under such a proposal they can elect more than 50 MPs.”

 

But he said the hybrid law might prove ineffective in the presence of the big feudal political parties in the country. “The purpose of the proportional representation system is to give independent candidates a chance, but independent candidates will be forced either to withdraw or to join a larger list controlled by a political party for many different reasons,” said Nader.

 

One of the reasons might be the high threshold set for the minimum number of votes needed to win a seat, according to Nader, who argued that if the threshold in the proportional representation system was set at 20 percent, independents would have no chance of winning a seat.

 

Other analysts described the recent proposals as a waste of time and a willful attempt by lawmakers to delay the process and ultimately extend the Parliament’s mandate.

 

MP Farid Khazen, a professor at the American University of Beirut, said the latest proposal submitted by the March 14 alliance fitted their electoral interests alone: “Such a proposal cannot be approved by their political rivals, because it was drafted in a way that fits their own electoral interests.”