Samir Geagea during an interview with AFP at his residence in Maarab, on Oct. 7, 2025. (Credit: Joseph Eid/AFP)
BEIRUT — Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea launched a new attack on Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, accusing him of trying to monopolize Parliament’s decision-making power over his stance on expatriate voting in the May 2026 elections.
In a post on X, Geagea quoted a statement he claimed Berri made — one the latter has denied. “It is the parliamentary majority — not you, nor any individual on their own, with all due respect to you and everyone else — that holds decision-making power in Parliament,” Geagea wrote, criticizing Berri for refusing to include on the agenda of a plenary session an amendment to the 2017 electoral law.
The amendment would allow Lebanese expatriates to vote from their countries of residence for all 128 MPs. “You cannot reduce Parliament to yourself alone,” Geagea said, adding, “It is either the Constitution, the law and the system, or the law of the jungle. And we will no longer accept the law of the jungle.”
Geagea claimed Berri said, “We experimented with expatriate voting in the last parliamentary elections, a first and last time, and it will absolutely never happen again, no matter how loud the outcry.” He described the alleged remarks as “an attack on Parliament, the parliamentary system, the Lebanese system and democracy as a whole.”
The Amal-affiliated channel NBN cited Berri as saying, “Where do you get these words you attribute to me? Do you have nothing better to do than fabricate statements in my name?”
The most recent public statement from Berri on the elections, reported Friday, said that “those who wish to participate in the vote (...) will simply have to come to Lebanon.”
The issue of expatriate voting — which has divided Lebanon’s political class for months — threatens to paralyze Parliament and raise concerns about a possible delay of the May elections or a vote excluding the diaspora. Civil society groups and parties including the Lebanese Forces are pushing to amend the 2017 electoral law. Other parties, allied with Amal and Hezbollah, oppose any change and want to maintain Article 112, which establishes a separate expatriate constituency with six seats in addition to the current 128. The article has never been implemented and was suspended in a later amendment.
