Jumblat Supports Consensus on Electoral Law, Rejects Voting
Democratic Gathering parliamentary bloc leader MP Walid Jumblat said he rejects voting either in cabinet or in parliament on a new vote law proposal to rule the upcoming parliamentary elections, An Nahar daily reported on Saturday.
Jumblat said that consensual agreement on a new electoral law is better than a vote.
“The agreement on an electoral law must not be through voting, it must be consensually reached because it is one of the sensitive and fateful nationalist issues,” he told the daily.
“We have seen where voting led us in some agreements,” he added without elaborating.
The Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces support a vote on a law for the elections while AMAL, Hizbullah, the Progressive Socialist Party and others refuse the measure.
A cabinet meeting scheduled to meet on Monday and devoted to discuss Lebanon's voting system, vows to be decisive and productive as for reaching an agreement.
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.
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.
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.
Source: Naharnet
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