(Credit: AFP)
Beirut — The head of the Free Patriotic Movement Gebran Bassil said on Tuesday that his party is going to file a complaint on Wednesday before the Constitutional Council about the latest amendments to electoral law that reschedules the upcoming parliamentary polls to 27 March; however, he clarified that he “insists on the elections taking place.”
Here’s what we know:
• Bassil added that he will ask for the suspension of the amendment but not of the actual law so as not to hamper administrative preparations for the elections.
• Parliament has voted twice on an amendment of a law that schedules the upcoming parliamentary elections earlier than their original May. The legislature has also voted against another amendment that gives Lebanese expats six seats in Parliament distributed over six continents in addition to the 128 MPs. Bassil and his party spoke strongly against both of those amendments and argued that the new date would cause logistical issues due to inclement weather typical during March.
• President Michel Aoun, who is the founder of FPM and Bassil’s father-in-law, had sent the amendments back for reconsideration, arguing that they would deprive thousands of young people of the opportunity to vote as they would not have reached the voting age before the earlier date. Parliament reacted by approving the same amendments again. Therefore, by default, the amendments went in effect without Aoun’s signature.
• During the second parliamentary session in which the amendments were approved, Bassil argued that quorum had not been reached, since Speaker Nabih Berri had announced that an absolute majority would be reached with 59 MPs rather than 65 MPs. Berri, however, defended the logic of his decision, pointing out that 11 seats in the country’s 128-member Parliament are presently vacant and that precedent was set for such revisions of quorum during the elections of presidents Rene Mouawad and Bachir Gemayel.