Kanaan: We're Obliged to Reach Consensus on a New Electoral Law

Change and Reform bloc secretary Ibrahim Kanaan has revealed that President Michel Aoun will not sign a decree that calls for parliamentary elections to be held on May 21.

“Aoun has already announced that he will not sign the decree before an agreement is reached over a certain law,” Kanaan told al-Mustaqbal newspaper in remarks published Sunday.

“We are obliged to agree on a new electoral law. The parliament's term expires in June and it can modify the deadlines before this date,” the MP added.

The decree requires the signatures of both Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Sources close to the president told the newspaper that the decree has not yet reached the presidential palace.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq had signed the decree on Saturday, three days before the February 21 deadline stipulated by the current electoral law, which is an amended version of the 1960 law.

The country has not organized parliamentary elections since 2009 and the legislature has instead twice extended its own mandate.

While al-Mustaqbal Movement has rejected that the electoral law be fully based on the proportional representation system, arguing that Hizbullah's arms would prevent serious competition in the party's strongholds, Druze leader MP Walid Jumblat has totally rejected proportional representation, even within a hybrid law, warning that it would “marginalize” the minority Druze community.

Hizbullah, Mustaqbal, AMAL Movement, the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces are meanwhile discussing several formats of a so-called hybrid law that mixes proportional representation with the winner-takes-all system.