Mawlawi: Holding elections on time more important than voting megacenters

BEIRUT — Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi Monday said that implementation of voting megacenters during the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for May 15, “is a good reform step, but the more important step is not postponing the elections,” the state-run National News agency reported.

Here’s what we know:

    • “The prime minister and I agree on forming megacenters as a first reform step, however, there are three lawful, financial and logistical obstacles,” Mawlawi said after meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

    • Mawlawi said that Mikati has asked for the formation of three subcommittees to “study the lawful matters and find solutions for them.”

    • The interior minister also said that a subcommittee should be formed simultaneously “to solve the logistical problems and to test the possibility of implementing megacenters in the time left.”

    • Last week, the Lebanese Organization for Democratic Elections told L’Orient Today that “Bringing up the megacenter issue, less than three months before the elections, will pave the way for postponing them under various names and pretexts, including ‘technical’ issues.”

    • Those in favor of electoral megacenters argue that placing them in centrally located cities would ease the job of election monitors by limiting the number of polling places that need to be watched. It would also save voters the transportation fees required to travel back to their villages to vote, as the country suffers from an unprecedented economic crisis and with fuel prices skyrocketing worldwide.