Report: Parliamentary Polls Likely Postponed until September
Political parties have realized that the parliamentary elections slated for May could be postponed until September to be staged based on a new electoral law, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday.
“The political parties are fully informed that the polls will be staged on the last Sunday of September and will be held based on a new law,” Lebanese Forces sources told the daily.
“Attempts to escape forward will not work because the polls will be staged based on a new law simply because it is no one's benefit to trigger enmity with the new term (of the President) in the first few months of its inception,” the sources declared.
“Additionally, it is in no major political force's benefit to expose Lebanon during a stage of external transformations that require consensus domestically, especially that everyone is certain that President Michel Aoun does not intend to show leniency in the issues of extension (of parliament term) and the 1960 law,” they continued to say.
The political parties have intensified their efforts in recent days in a bid to agree on a new electoral law before the expiry of the deadlines.
They are discussing several formats of a so-called “hybrid” electoral law that combines the proportional representation and winner-takes-all systems.
One of the main obstacles is the Progressive Socialist Party's rejection of proportional representation. The party has warned that any law containing proportional representation would “marginalize” the minority Druze community.
The country has not voted for a parliament since 2009, with the legislature instead twice extending its own mandate. The 2009 polls were held under an amended version of the 1960 electoral law and the next elections are scheduled for May 2017.
Source: Naharnet
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