Lebanese Agree Election Law Needs Reform: UN Envoy
May 22 , 2005
BEIRUT (Reuters) — Lebanese politicians agree that electoral reform must be a priority after Lebanon holds its first parliamentary polls for three decades without Syrian troops in the country, a U.N. election expert said on Sunday.
Lebanese go to the polls in four rounds of voting from May 29 to June 19 under a widely criticised law designed to maximise the influence of pro-Syrian politicians in the 2000 elections.
“If there’s one area of consensus, it’s obviously that the 2000 law has flaws and also that the electoral law needs to be discussed immediately after the elections,” Carina Perelli, head of the U.N. elections unit, told Reuters in an interview.
Many Lebanese believe their politicians will simply go back to business as usual once the election is over and quietly forget their promises of reform made after protests by hundreds of thousands of people helped force the Syrian withdrawal.
But Perelli challenged that view.
“Politicians are aware this is what people think. They are also aware that the situation has fundamentally changed and that elections are only one step in the political transition.
“And they are aware that Lebanese citizens played a fundamental role by taking to the streets,” she said.
Before it ended its 29-year military presence last month, Syria had dominated Lebanese politics, ensuring that any Beirut government took its cue from Damascus. Critics of the pro-Syrian order say Lebanon lost its independence and corruption thrived.
The vagaries of the electoral law, retained to enable the polls to be held without delay, mean many of the same faces will return to parliament, despite the political earthquake set off by the February 14 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
That prompted Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim leaders to join in demanding a Syrian pullout, though sectarian-flavoured election jockeying has somewhat eroded their loose alliance.
U.N. READY TO HELP
Perelli said the United Nations, which is providing technical assistance for the polls and coordinating with European Union and other foreign observers, could bring its expertise to any Lebanese debate on electoral law if asked.
Perelli said she had found a consensus among politicians that a new law should last over several elections, not just one as has been the practice since the 1975-90 civil war.
She said it was important to engage society in the debate. Any new law should be passed well before any election so that it was not skewed by political self-interest. Plenty of time was needed for technical implementation of any changes, she added.
The Syrian withdrawal has reopened debate on Lebanon’s future 15 years after the civil war ended in compromises achieved in the 1989 Taif agreement.
Taif readjusted Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system balance by giving equal representation to Muslims and Christians in parliament, where Christians previously had more seats, even though they form only about 40 percent of the population.
But the agreement left unchanged the practice whereby the president is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the parliament speaker a Shi’ite Muslim.
No progress has been made, or even attempted, on the Taif accord’s call for the eventual abolition of “confessionalism” as Lebanon’s system of allocating power and posts by sect is known.
Perelli, Uruguayan director of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division, said Lebanon could expect a lot of goodwill from the international community in helping with political transition.
There was a strong desire on all sides never to return to Lebanon’s bloody past. “This is a society that has gone through so much suffering from war and occupation,” she said.
