BEIRUT:
Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh has said that the political
crisis in Lebanon is a presidential election battle and not an electoral
law debate, adding that the new presidential term didn’t achieve its
purpose. “This is a presidential battle and not one to restore the
rights of Christians,” Frangieh, the former presidential candidate,
said in a talk show aired on LBCI Thursday evening. Frangieh
warned of failing to agree on a vote law and dragging the country into
vacuum, adding that “no sustainable changes have occurred” after the
election of President Michel Aoun as the country’s 13th president after
an almost two and a half year vacuum. He called for agreement among rival parties to avert a “catastrophe.” Politicians are still scrambling to agree on a new vote law. “We
have fought a fierce battle for over 10 years to elect a strong
president, but when the strong president arrived we didn’t see any
changes. The country didn’t advance in the past six months,” Frangieh
said.

Frangieh, who ran against Aoun in the presidential race,
said that “Aoun was a symbol of change and reform but what we are seeing
doesn’t meet our aspirations.” FThe Marada chief said
that the best solution to the electoral law deadlock is to agree on a
vote law and conduct the elections within three months. He expressed his
vehement support for a proportional system “because we believe in
partnership.” Frangieh told his interviewer that rivals are afraid to adopt the Orthodox vote law. The
Orthodox Gathering Law, as it is called, was proposed in 2012 by former
Deputy Speaker Elie Ferzli, and was supported mainly by the FPM. It
essentially calls for each sect to elect its own MPs within the country
as a single district. Critics, however, said it would aggravate
sectarian divisions in the country.The Marada leader also blasted Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil
sectarian-based qualification vote proposal. “Bassil doesn’t want to
take the stairs one step at a time … He is working on isolating or
ending any competition.” He
said that Bassil had proposed the same vote law since 2005 but with
different forms. “They want to fix a vote law that suits them.”