Jumblat: Proposed Law Format Annuls Muslim-Christian Partnership
Progressive Socialist party leader MP Walid Jumblat criticized an electoral law format proposed by Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil, saying it strikes the Christian-Muslim partnership stipulated in the national pact of 1943, and the Taef Accord.
Jumblat who commonly takes to twitter said in a tweet: “The proposed electoral law format nullifies the Christian-Muslim partnership from the 1943 pact and the Taef Accord.”
The 1943 National Pact is an unwritten agreement that set the foundations of modern Lebanon as a multi-confessional state based on Christian-Muslim partnership.
The country has not organized parliamentary elections since 2009 and the legislature has instead twice extended its own mandate. The last polls were held under an amended version of the 1960 electoral law.
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has recently proposed an electoral law that mixes proportional representation with the controversial law proposed by the Orthodox Gathering.
The parliamentary electoral law that had been proposed by the Orthodox Gathering stipulates that each sect would elects its own MPs according to a proportional representation system. The proposal’s opponents have dismissed it as “sectarian” and “divisive.”
Hizbullah has repeatedly called for an electoral law fully based on the proportional representation system and a single or several large electorates.
Druze leader Walid Jumblat has rejected proportional representation, warning that it would "marginalize" his minority Druze community, whose presence is concentrated in the Aley and Chouf areas.
Amid reservations over proportional representation by other parties such as al-Mustaqbal Movement and the Lebanese Forces, the political parties are mulling a so-called hybrid electoral law that mixes proportional representation with the winner-takes-all system.
But Mustaqbal leader and Prime Minister Saad Hariri has recently announced that he is willing to accept full proportional representation.
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