Sources: Hizbullah, FPM Pressure Halts Berri-Jumblat Talks on Hybrid Vote Law
Consultations between Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on a hybrid electoral draft-law have reached a dead end over pressure exerted by the speaker's allies in the March 8 majority alliance, PSP sources said Tuesday.
The sources told al-Liwaa newspaper that Berri suggested instead a draft-law that considers Lebanon a single district after coming under pressure by Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement of MP Michel Aoun.
The hybrid vote law combines the winner-takes-all and the proportional representation systems.
A proposal that was made by the opposition al-Mustaqbal movement in coordination with the PSP calls for choosing 70 lawmakers through the winner-takes-all system and 58 through proportionality based on a division of 26 districts for the first system and 9 governorates for the second.
The consultations between the two parties later expanded to the rest of the factions in Lebanon.
In remarks to As Safir daily on Monday, Jumblat said: “There are consultations in different directions. Al-Mustaqbal bloc is in contact with the Lebanese Forces and I am in contact with Berri.”
But the PSP sources said Tuesday that negotiations between Berri and Jumblat stopped after the pressure exerted on the speaker by his allies Hizbullah and the FPM that support a single electoral district.
Contacts between al-Mustaqbal and the PSP have also slowed over differences on the district of Baabda, informed sources told al-Liwaa on Monday.
Only one proposal, the so-called Orthodox Gathering plan, has been approved by the joint parliamentary committees, the last step before holding a General Assembly to give it the final go ahead.
But Berri has vowed not to invite MPs for a parliamentary session before the rival factions reach consensus on a draft-law.
President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Najib Miqati, Jumblat's PSP, al-Mustaqbal and the March 14 opposition's Christian independent lawmakers have rejected the Orthodox Gathering proposal which considers Lebanon a single electoral district and allows each sect to vote for its own MPs under a proportional representation system.
They have warned that if parliament adopts the draft it would harm the social fabric and deepen sectarian divisions in addition to leading to extremism.
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://cdn.naharnet.com/stories/en/75244 |