The Government Monitor No. 22 - The Controversy over Amending the 2017 Election Law

WHAT’S THE ISSUE AT HAND?
After extending its own tenure three times since 2013, the Lebanese Parliament finally passed Law No. 44 on 16 June 2017, opening the way for the holding of the 2018 parliamentary elections. The new law introduced a number of major reforms to the electoral framework that were intended to improve representation. The election law has been brought back into public debate as Lebanon approaches the 2022 Parliamentary election, with several amendments being at the center of the dispute.
 
Election law No. 44 of 2017
Law No 44/2017 (“the 2017 election law”) moved Lebanon away from a majoritarian system to a more inclusive, proportional system that permits preferential voting, and allows for more accurate representation, in addition to allowing non-resident Lebanese citizens to vote. Under Article 3 of the 2017 electoral law, Lebanese living abroad were given the right to vote for the 128 MPs of Lebanon’s 15 electoral districts in the countries they reside in. However, according to Article 122 of the same law, in the following elections, the Lebanese expatriate community would be allotted six additional parliamentary seats (one for each continent) to represent them exclusively.[1] Significantly, the law also introduced for the first time (Article�