Lebanon agrees on electoral law

Lebanon’s rival parties today reached agreement on an electoral law, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said, staving off a political crisis and paving the way for a parliamentary election.

The agreement still needs the approval of the cabinet in a meeting scheduled for tomorrow, and will then be sent to parliament.

“Today we have reached a political agreement between the political sides,” said Bassil, an ally of President Michel Aoun.

Read: Lebanon: 6 months of planning before elections can occur

The new law will introduce the proportional representation system for elections, change the number of electoral districts, and give overseas Lebanese nationals voting rights, a senior political source said.

It will take at least six months to prepare for an election, Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk said last week.

The agreement averts a crisis that had threatened to unravel the political deal that brought Aoun to office last year, more than two years after the previous president left.

Politicians have spent months wrangling over the new law and had a deadline of 20 June to pass it before parliament’s term expired.

The country has never been without a parliament before, but the present parliament has extended its own term twice since 2009 because of fundamental disagreements between the parties.