The fact that the Constitutional Council did not reach a decision Dec. 21 on the Free Patriotic Movement’s appeal of amendments that Parliament made to electoral law no. 44 of 2017 has perhaps met the desire of a large segment of expatriate voters who are eager for change in the legislative elections of May 2022.

Had this not been the case, the latter would have seen their ambitions smashed by having their votes limited to only six MPs to represent them in a 16th district, rather than getting to cast their ballots for all the 128 MPs in Parliament based on the voters’ civil registration.

Since the Constitutional Council did not uphold the appeal, the contested law is considered in force. However, confusion remains over the legal terms of future elections. The expats' right to vote alongside Lebanese residents has yet to be permanently enshrined in the law.

The above-mentioned law provides for diaspora voters registered in Lebanese embassies in their respective countries to be represented in a 16th district of six members covering all six continents and representing the country’s main religious communities. The law also states that the above-mentioned provision shall be enforced starting 2022, suspending its application exceptionally in the 2018 elections.

However, the amendment that Parliament adopted in October suspended the establishment of this additional district in preparation for the next legislative elections, but not permanently.

The FPM’s appeal aimed to reinstate it. But the party’s appeal failed when the Constitutional Council did not issue a decision on it on Dec. 21. As the Constitutional Council did not decide on the appeal to invalidate this suspension, it allowed the amended law to be subsequently enforced in the elections scheduled for May, but only for this May’s elections. The amended text in fact specifies that this suspension is “for one time only” and “exclusively for spring 2022.”

This leaves the Lebanese overseas in a state of uncertainty regarding the legislative elections scheduled for 2026.

Will the law of 2017 be implemented, thus taking away from non-residents the ability to vote the same way residents do? Will the new Parliament add a new amendment to the law? In this case, will this amendment be subject to an appeal for invalidation? Will this appeal be accepted or rejected? All these questions point to legislative instability — an art in which Parliament has become a master — giving priority to political interests over the citizens’ legal certainty.

“The Lebanese living abroad will abide by Article 122 of Law no 44 of 2017 in case it has not been amended within four years. In other words, they will vote for six MPs in the 16th district. If the law is amended, their vote will depend on whether an appeal is to be filed and whether it is accepted or not,” former Interior Minister Ziad Baroud says.

Leeway

“Had the MPs wanted to give the expats a permanent right to vote for candidates running in their districts of origin, they would have simply abolished the article providing for casting their ballots in a 16th electoral district,” Rizk Zgheib, a lawyer and a lecturer at Saint Joseph University's law and political science faculty, says.

“However, the amendment did not annul this provision, and this is destined to be implemented,” he adds.

In this vein, Paul Morcos, founder and manager of JUSTICIA, a Lebanese law firm, denounces the fact that “the electoral system is subject to unexpected and unjustified changes.”

“We do not know why the MPs suspended the law. Is it because the logistic preparations related to the 16th district were not completed or because the distribution of candidates to the six continents does not suit them?” he asks.

“Parliamentarians probably thought that if they drafted an amendment to annul Article 122, the majority of the Constitutional Council’s members would accept it. However, by opting for the suspension [of the article], they allowed themselves to have leeway to decide whether or not the law providing for the 16th district will be implemented in future elections, depending on the prevailing political circumstances,” Morcos says.

The law of 2017 has therefore remained as is.

“It cannot be subject to appeal before the Constitutional Council, because the deadline for such an appeal lapsed 10 days after its [the law’s] publication,” Zgheib says.

However, he said that the Constitutional Council is entitled to examine the constitutionality of an old legislative provision in one case.

“The Constitutional Council, which would be resorted to in order to invalidate an amendment, could also examine the validity of the initial article, in case the two texts are linked to each other,” he argues.

“Hence, in the event that prior to the 2026 legislative elections an appeal is filed to invalidate a new amendment to the provision [regulating] the diaspora vote, the Constitutional Council could on this occasion examine the constitutionality of the law of 2017, provided that a correlation between this [law] and the proposed amendments comes to the attention of the council,” Zgheib adds.

“In this case, even if the amended legal article does not aim to annul the initial article, the Constitutional Council could, on its own initiative, make this annulment if it finds that it does not comply with the Constitution,” the lawyer says.

This would allow expatriates to have the predictability and stability of their electoral rights ensured, without suffering from sudden and temporary changes at the discretion of legislators.