Elections in Lebanon

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Elections in Lebanon are allotted to occur every four years. Every citizen is allowed to vote, but the positions are constitutionally allocated by religious affiliation. [1] In 2014, the Parliament failed to elect a president and extended its own term. In 2018 general elections resumed. Lebanon was ranked second most electoral democracy in the Middle East according to V-Dem Democracy indices in 2023 with a score of 0.157 out of 1. [2] [3]

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Parliamentary electoral system

Lebanon's national legislature is called the Chamber of Deputies (Arabic : مجلس النواب, romanized: Majlis An-Nouwab). Since the elections of 1992 (the first since the reforms of the Taif Agreement of 1989) removed the built-in majority previously enjoyed by Christians, the Parliament is composed of 128 seats with a term of four years.

Seats in the Parliament are confessionally distributed but elected by universal suffrage. Each religious community has an allotted number of seats in the Parliament (see the table below). They do not represent only their co-religionists, however; all candidates in a particular constituency, regardless of religious affiliation, must receive a plurality of the total vote, which includes followers of all confessions. The system was designed to minimize inter-sectarian competition and maximize cross-confessional cooperation: candidates are opposed only by co-religionists, but must seek support from outside their own faith in order to be elected.

In practice, this system has led to charges of gerrymandering. The opposition Qornet Shehwan Gathering, a group opposed to the previous pro-Syrian governments, has claimed that constituency boundaries have been drawn so as to allow many Shi'a Muslims to be elected from Shi'a-majority constituencies (where the Hezbollah Party is strong), while allocating many Christian members to Muslim-majority constituencies, forcing Christian politicians to represent Muslim interests. Similar charges, but in reverse, were made against the Chamoun administration in the 1950s.

The following table sets out the confessional allocation of seats in the Parliament before and after the Taif Agreement.

Parliament of Lebanon seat allocation
ConfessionBefore TaifAfter Taif
Maronite Catholic 3034
Eastern Orthodox 1114
Melkite Catholic 68
Armenian Orthodox 45
Armenian Catholic 11
Protestant 11
Other Christian Minorities 11
Total Christians5464
Sunni 2027
Shi'ite 1927
Alawite 02
Druze 68
Total Muslims + Druze4564
Total99128

Before the next election,[ when? ] the electoral law will be reformed. [4] Among the changes most likely are a reduction of the voting age from 21 to 18, a more proportional electoral system, reforms to the oversight of elections and an invitation for Lebanese voters from abroad to register in the embassies, although there is no clear promise of them being able to vote from abroad. [5]

Especially outside the major cities, elections tend to focus more on local than national issues, and it is not unusual for a party to join an electoral ticket in one constituency while aligned with a rival party – even an ideologically opposite party – in another constituency.

Lebanese presidential elections are indirect, with the President being elected to a 6-year term by the Parliament.

Elections took place on June 7, 2009. The Rafik Hariri Martyr List, an anti-Syrian bloc led by Saad Hariri, captured control of the legislature winning 71 of the 128 available seats. The Amal-Hezbollah alliance won 30 seats, with 27 seats going to the Free Patriotic Movement and allied parties.

The most recent general elections were held in Lebanon on 15 May 2022. See 2022 Lebanese general election.

See also

Related Research Articles

Lebanon is a parliamentary democratic republic within the overall framework of confessionalism, a form of consociationalism in which the highest offices are proportionately reserved for representatives from certain religious communities. The constitution of Lebanon grants the people the right to change their government. However, from the mid-1970s until the parliamentary elections in 1992, the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) precluded the exercise of political rights.

The Taif Agreement, officially known as the National Reconciliation Accord, was reached to provide "the basis for the ending of the civil war and the return to political normalcy in Lebanon". Negotiated in Taif, Saudi Arabia, it was designed to end the 15 year-long Lebanese Civil War, reassert Lebanese government authority in southern Lebanon, which was controlled at the time by the Christian-separatist South Lebanon Army under the occupational hegemony of Israel. Though the agreement set a time frame for withdrawal of Syrian military forces from Lebanon, stipulating that the Syrian occupation end within two years, Syria did not withdraw its forces from the country until 2005. It was signed on 22 October 1989 and ratified by the Lebanese parliament on 5 November, 1989.

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References

  1. "Lebanon". United States Department of State. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  2. V-Dem Institute (2023). "The V-Dem Dataset" . Retrieved 14 October 2023.
  3. Democracy Report 2023, Table 3, V-Dem Institute, 2023
  4. Archived 2011-10-03 at the Wayback Machine
  5. "Reform groups rally in favor of proportional representation following stall in negotiations". www.dailystar.com.lb.