Hezbollah, accuse each other of elimination via electoral laws

Hezbollah and the March 14 coalition exchanged accusations Monday, claiming that their rivals’ proposed draft election law aims at eliminating the other. Speaking to recent graduates at a high school in Nabatieh south Lebanon, Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad said March 14 sought to remove the resistance party from Lebanon’s political life via its electoral proposal. “The March 14 coalition are trying via an electoral law to propose formulas aimed at removing the resistance party and its supporters from political life and participation in state-building, but they are dreaming,” Raad, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, said. He also reiterated his party’s rejection of a return to the 1960s law used in the 2009 polls, which uses the administrative unit of the qada. “They will not be able to hold elections based on the 1960 law because there are at least two main groups that have announced their opposition to that,” Raad said. “And now they are dreaming beyond the 1960s, seeking a law based on small districts and if they could, they would have made the districts even smaller,” he added. March 14 have proposed a draft election law based on a winner-takes-all system that divides Lebanon into 50 small districts, while the Cabinet’s proposal divides the country into 13 medium-sized constituencies using proportional representation. Another draft law under study by the joint parliamentary committees is from the Free Patriotic Movement and allows each sect to elect their representatives based on proportional representation. Hezbollah has claimed that the March 14 bill violates the Taif Accord, which stipulates that parliamentary elections should be held in accordance with a law on the basis of five provinces, later amended into six. Meanwhile, the Future Movement and the Progressive Socialist Party have outright rejected proportional representation, with the former accusing the government of formulating a draft law to benefit Hezbollah’s interest. Future Movement MP Habib Khodr said Monday the March 8-dominant Cabinet aims at continuing what he described as a coup against state institutions via a new election law. “The proposed electoral law confirms that March 8 is preparing to continue its coup via state institutions, particularly the Lebanese Parliament,” Khodr told Voice of Lebanon radio station. He also added that the bill aimed at overthrowing the principles of the Taif and eliminating Hezbollah and FPM’s rivals, saying: “This is literally an elimination law.” “If Hezbollah and anyone else thinks that they can eliminate and shut down the political house of Saad Hariri, [they share] an Aounist fantasy that will never come true,” Khodr said. The Future Movement lawmaker also said that the March 14 proposal of small districts is not what the party desired but that they will vote in favor of it if their Christian allies believe it best represents them. From DailyStar