Boutros Law Gets Two Powerful Backers

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Could the support of a maverick party leader and a highly influential journalist set the Boutros law snowball rolling?

Could they help make our elections fair?

This blog has long argued that the fairest election law out there is the one set up by the national electoral law commission headed by the highly respected figure Mr. Fouad Boutros. The law proposal (read the draft here) which was commissioned in 2005 but never took off because of the Israeli war, is a modern law which comes closest to fulfilling the two conflicting Lebanese needs of true representation and defragmentation.

The problem was that the law encroaches of the political fiefdoms of powerful parties. For example, proportional representation has the potential to reduce the Future movement’s influence in the North and Hezbollah’s in the south. If it takes on, expect some politicians to fight hard to remove some of its clauses (Mr. Geagea doesn’t like the idea of the under-18 voting –a majority of under-18s are Shiaa–, and Muslims in general don’t like the idea of the diaspora, a large-chunk of which is Christian, voting) In other words, without serious pressure from the media, civil groups and independent politicians, the law will never take off.

There is already a civil campaign to vouch for the law, but without serious political backing, it will gather dust. This is where the endorsements of Mr. Ghassan Tueni — arguably the most influential journalist in Lebanon and a respectable March 14 elder — and that of Mr. Aoun (as per Assafir, May 5, 2008), are important. Such high-profile endorsements put the onus on Politicians like Mr. Berri and Mr. Hariri to explain why they’re against the law, and hopefully embarrass them into signing on.

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