Image Luis Vazquez

by -Dr Joseph A. Kechichian – Gulfnews

The Lebanese seldom trust each other, especially at the political
level. And while the country is nominally a democracy, its unique
power-sharing formula allocates influence to most communities in a
more-or-less harmonious fashion. That’s the theory of the
consociationalism mechanism that determines Maronite, Sunni and Shiite
authority. In reality, the parliamentary democratic republic is
hostage to itself, and while the 1989 Ta’if Accords, that suspended the
1975-1990 Civil War, removed the built-in majority previously enjoyed by
Christians and brought parity between Christians and Muslims, the
parliament’s 128 seats are all confessionally distributed.

Because
of the country’s demographic make-up, each religious community has an
allotted number of seats, even if candidates must receive a plurality of
the total vote cast, which includes followers of all confessions. This
deliberately-designed system is meant to minimise inter-sectarian
competition and maximise cross-confessional cooperation. In other words,
and while every candidate is theoretically opposed by a coreligionist
[for example, two or more Sunnis competing over a Sunni seat must seek
support from outside of their own faith in order to win], the process
produces the mother-of all gerrymandering loads.

Over the years,
multi-member constituencies emerged, which “secured” most of the 128
seats, irrespective the person who filled the post. In the Baabda-Aley
district, for example, the predominantly Druze area of Aley (in the
Chouf Mountains) were combined in 2000 with the predominantly Christian
area of Baabda, into a single constituency. Likewise, while several
seats in the South are allocated to Christians, they have to appeal to a
predominantly Shiite electorate, which means the latter chose Christian
parliamentarians.

Christian politicians have claimed that
constituency boundaries were extensively gerrymandered in the elections
of 1992, 1996, 2000, 2005 and 2009. They insisted that past
rearrangements favoured the election of Shiites, for example, from
Shiite-majority constituencies (where Hezbollah is strong and can
prevent the opposition to challenge it), while allocating many Christian
members to Muslim-majority districts.

This,
in short, is the dilemma and the chief reason why everyone allegedly
opposes the current law — first designed in 1960 and modified very
slightly in 2008 after the Doha conference that ended a comical chapter
in the parliament’s “sale-of-the-decade” deal, which unblocked the
self-created political stalemate of the time.

Politicians
huffed-and-puffed ever since and continue to vituperate as various
proposals are floated to replace the infamous law that served, it is
absolutely essential to underscore, every community rather well by
preserving confessional privileges.

Among the many proposals under
consideration, three stand out: (1) A proportional system in which
Lebanon would become a single district that will introduce pluralism;
(2) A hybrid system that will include both winner-takes-all and
proportionality; and (3) The Orthodox Plan in which one only gets to
vote for a member of one’s confession.

In endless debates,
mistrustful elite spokespersons displayed their fears that the
proportional system will incite a renewed sectarian conflict, whereas
the hybrid mechanism, some insisted, will simply rearrange the decks.
The so-called Orthodox Plan is rejected out of hand because of its far
narrower preferences that will dramatically further divide the already
separated.

“Whatever
agreement Lebanon’s elites eventually settle for will of course require
an understanding between the executive and the legislature.””

A
few weeks ago, the Minister of the Interior Nouhad Al Mashnouq signed a
decree that calls on the electorate to participate in the upcoming
polls, as required by Article 66 of the current law, which stipulates
sending the decree to the cabinet 90 days ahead of Election Day. The
current schedule is for the elections to be held on May 21 [they must be
held before June 21 to avoid a void in the current term], based on the
1960 winner-takes-all law, though President Michel Aoun has not, at
least so far, issued his final decision on the issue.

Whatever
agreement elites eventually settle for will of course require an
understanding between the executive and the legislature — yes, the
current one will be called upon to determine its own fate — with Speaker
Nabih Berri playing a vital role. Berri recently said that adopting the
1960 vote law to govern the upcoming elections was a far better option
than extending parliament’s tenure for a third time, and declared: “If
we reach April 17 and we have no [new electoral] law at hand, then one
of our alternatives is staging the polls based on the valid 1960 law.”

This
was no idle chatter and though Berri added that he completely rejected
the current law, he nevertheless posted his sharp difference of opinion
with Aoun, who has ruled out the 1960 majoritarian system and affirmed
that he preferred void. It remains to be determined whether support for a
hybrid law that blends provisions of the proportional and majoritarian
systems will materialise soon, though what the Lebanese lack is trust in
each other. Absent such an ingredient, elections and laws will barely
stand as ephemeral spectacles.

Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the
author of the just-published The Attempt to Uproot Sunni Arab Influence:
A Geo-Strategic Analysis of the Western, Israeli and Iranian Quest for
Domination (Sussex: 2017).