The headquarters of the Constitutional Council. (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — The Constitutional Council announced Tuesday it had rejected appeals to a law extending the mandates of the municipal councils, the state-run National News Agency reported. The extension law — which also delays municipal elections that were scheduled for this year — has therefore become effective.
“The council held a session in the presence of the 10 members at its headquarters in Hadath, and decided to reject the appeals related to the conduct of municipal and mukhtar elections, and thus the extension law became effective,” the NNA reported.
A source on the council told L'Orient-Le Jour three of the ten council members voted in favor of the appeals.
Continuity of public services
Mireille Najm, one of the three CC members who voted in favor of the appeals, explained that with its decision, the institution "gave precedence to the principle of the continuity of public services," despite the fact that the law can be considered a violation of the constitutional principles of the right to vote and the periodicity of elections.
Najm explained that according to the decision, if the appeals had been accepted, "public services would have been sabotaged," as citizens would have been unable to complete their administrative formalities with the mukhtars.
Additionally, in the event of municipal council vacancies, their tasks and work would have been assigned to the employees of the mohafazat (governorates), for whom it would have been difficult to assume responsibility for 1,155 municipalities.
Najm explained however, that she had voted in favor of the appeals, arguing that there were no exceptional circumstances to justify extending the mandates of local elected officials.
For her, the important thing was to "preserve the right to vote and the principle of accountability of elected representatives."
She also stressed that, even in the case of exceptional circumstances that would justify an extension, the decision to extend mandates by one year was "not proportional" to the infringement of the right to vote.
"The Minister of the Interior does not have the prerogative to decide the election date himself, but it is up to the legislator to do so," she said.
Three groups of MPs from the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb, as well as some independent and Forces of Change MPs, had appealed the law before the Constitutional Council between April 28 and May 4.
Contacted by L'Orient-Le Jour, MP Paula Yacoubian (Forces of Change bloc), described the CC's decision as "distressing."
"The CC is the institution that oversees the constitutionality of laws," she observed, "yet in the text of its decision, the institution recognizes the anti-constitutionality of the law extending the mandate of municipal councils, while voting against the appeal, hence the contradiction."
"If the CC is no longer going to defend the constitutionality of laws, what is its raison d'être?" she asked.
For his part, Lebanese Forces spokesman Charles Jabbour told L'Orient-Le jour that "the judicial decision has been taken, and there's nothing we can do about it, but it's no less unfair because an electoral deadline should not be postponed."
"Our approach was not political, but constitutional," Jabbour added. "The deadlines for the municipal elections were not respected, on the pretext of a lack of budget, and yet the solutions existed. All the pretexts put forward do not hold water."
Jabbour believes that the decision is motivated by the fear certain political parties have of losing the elections. This fear, according to Jabbour, is why they preferred to postpone them.
Parliament saw staunch disagreement over when the municipal elections, originally scheduled for May, would take place and how they would be financed.
Eventually, Parliament voted to extend the current municipal councils' terms, essentially delaying the elections amid questions over whether there was any funding to hold them in the first place.
LF and Kataeb MPs boycotted the vote session.