BEIRUT: Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt will continue to hold talks over the electoral law, sources close to the speaker said Monday, hours after the PSP rejected Berri’s hybrid proposal.
Speaking to The Daily Star, the sources said that Berri and Jumblatt agreed to hold more discussions to tackle the number of districts and MPs to be elected under proportional representation and under a winner-takes-all system, respectively.
“The speaker will continue his meetings with various parties. He will meet tomorrow [Tuesday] with Future Movement MP Ahmad Fatfat and Kataeb MP Sami Gemayel,” one source said.
“He will continue his discussions until May 15, when he will hold consecutive sessions and work day and night to achieve consensus on a new electoral law,” he said.
The source explained that if no consensus was reached on a voting system, the speaker would resort to putting the existing draft laws to a vote.
“The speaker will not consider extending the Parliament’s term before exhausting all potential avenues for agreement,” the source said.
A PSP delegation visited Berri earlier in the day and informed him of Jumblatt’s rejection of the proposal he had submitted a week earlier.
Under Berri’s proposal, 55 to 60 percent of MPs would be elected under a winner-takes-all system and a one-man-one-vote system.
The rest would be elected under proportional representation.
The qada would be the electoral district under the winner-takes-all system and the governorate under proportional representation.
“We discussed the proposal with Berri. He had his views and we had ours and we reached a conclusion that his proposal is not the ideal one,” caretaker Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour, from the PSP, told reporters after the meeting. Despite the stepped-up efforts to agree on an electoral law, a postponement of the June elections appears increasingly likely.
Earlier this month, Parliament passed a law suspending electoral deadlines under the 1960 law until May 19 to give parties time to reach consensus over an alternative law.
Last week, a group of PSP MPs, along with independent Christian and other lawmakers who oppose the suspension, challenged it before the Constitutional Council.
The MPs also called for delaying the suspension of poll deadlines until the council issues its final ruling on their challenge.
But the council said after a meeting Monday that there was no justification for deferring the law, because upholding the initial challenge to revoke it would have the same effect.
“We ruled unanimously that there is no justification for deferring the law, because if the council annuls the law, it will be abolishing its effects that were published in the Official Gazette on April 12,” Issam Suleiman, the council’s head, told The Daily Star.
Suleiman said he appointed a rapporteur whose name was undisclosed to prepare a report on the PSP challenge to the law. The report will be prepared within 10 days, at which point Suleiman will convene the council.
Suleiman said the body would issue its ruling by May 26.
“[If the challenge is accepted] the council will either decide to accept it in its entirety or specific elements that that violate the Constitution,” Suleiman said.
If the challenge is upheld then the law would be considered nonexistent, Suleiman said.
As efforts to pave the way for parliamentary elections intensified, Al-Manar said Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah would speak on the TV station Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. to tackle political developments.
Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon denied Monday that Moscow had, through its deputy foreign minister, asked Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria.
“[Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail] Bogdanov did not ask Hezbollah to do that, but listened to party official’s stances on this issue,” Russian Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin told a local media outlet.
President Michel Sleiman discussed efforts to reach agreement on an electoral law and form a new government with MP Mohammad Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc.
Separately, no new developments emerged in efforts to form the new Cabinet.
“There is nothing new. The prime minister-designate is still waiting for the response of the March 8 coalition on the principles he outlined in previous meetings, based on which he plans to form the government,” a source close to Salam said.
By: Wassim Mroueh
