Will You Register Your Name?

The Minister of External Affairs is asking the Lebanese abroad to register their names with Lebanese embassies. Should we listen to him?

Yesterday, during a Tv show, Minister Fawzi salloukh proposed that the Lebanese abroad register their names so that ‘the Lebanese government can keep records of them”.

The proposal comes amid growing demands for the Lebanese abroad to vote in the upcoming elections and Mr. Salloukh’s suggestion could be seen as a first step in that direction. But before the Lebanese rush to register their names, they should be careful about a potential trap that could deprive them of that very right.

We shouldn’t forget that Mr. Salloukh, after all, is a politician who belongs to a political party. He could well be gathering that information to ‘feel the waters’ for his party’s chances in such an election. If the data wasn’t favorable, Mr. Berri could very well shoot down the diaspora’s voting.

But what if Mr. Salloukh’s intentions were good? Doesn’t the ministry of external affairs and immigrants have the right to collect information before organizing elections outside of the country?

Of course it does, but it should be done in coordination with a bipartisan electoral commission that would emerge from the new electoral law. Anything before that could very much be a scam by politicians to control our votes.