Elderly woman walks past electoral campaign posters of Lebanese parliamentary candidates, in Beirut, Lebanon, 03 May 2018. Picture by Marwan Naamani/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved. “Those who did not vote in the election have lost their right to object,” asserted Lebanon's Interior Minister Nohad el-Mashnouk, who doubled as both candidate in and overseer of the recent parliamentary elections, and came out victorious on both counts — by his own account. Across the political spectrum, this sentiment is echoed amid frustration and anger at the low voter turnout in the long-awaited elections, which many hoped would create a break with the past.
In the five years since the Lebanese parliament's mandate expired in 2013, members of parliament illegally voted themselves back in three times, despite sporadic contestation from the public and opposition from grassroots initiatives like "Take Back Parliament.” Some of the pretexts for these extensions include security considerations stemming from the war raging next door in Syria and parliamentarians’ own inability to agree on a new electoral law. When one was finally approved in June 2017, the process was rushed and disregarded procedure, leading experts at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS) and the Lebanese Association Democratic Elections (LADE) to conclude that the electoral law “effectively qualifies ... as a decree” that had been “imposed on voters.”
The law, based on a system of proportionality aimed at reducing sectarian division, lacked fundamental democratic safeguards, including an independent electoral body and a campaign spending ceiling, and facilitated de facto vote-buying. And while the odds were stacked against independent candidates running in the face of opponents with their own media outlets and vast financial resources, many believed the reformed law would give independent nonsectarian parties a chance to elevate a handful of candidates willing to meet people's aspirations.
