Hizbullah, AMAL Consider Vacuum 'Red Line', Parliament May Vote on Electoral Laws

Hizbullah and AMAL Movement consider any parliamentary vacuum in the country a “red line” that should not be reached, a media report said on Sunday.

“Should we reach the final week of parliament's ordinary session, which is the third week of May, a possible solution might be in a parliament vote on all the (electoral) laws that are present in the parliament's drawers,” informed sources told the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa newspaper.

“Holding the elections under any law that wins a parliamentary vote is better than allowing vacuum to crawl into the legislative authority, a possibility that AMAL and Hizbullah consider to be a red line, the same as the rest of the political and sectarian forces,” the sources added.

The country has not organized parliamentary elections since 2009 and the legislature has instead twice extended its own mandate. The last polls were held under an amended version of the 1960 electoral law.

Hizbullah has repeatedly called for an electoral law fully based on the proportional representation system and a single or several large electorates.

Druze leader Walid Jumblat has rejected proportional representation, warning that it would "marginalize" his minority Druze community, whose presence is concentrated in the Aley and Chouf areas.

Amid reservations over proportional representation by other parties such as al-Mustaqbal Movement and the Lebanese Forces, the political parties are mulling a so-called hybrid electoral law that mixes proportional representation with the winner-takes-all system.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has recently proposed an electoral law that mixes proportional representation with the controversial law proposed by the Orthodox Gathering.

Bassil's format calls for electing 64 MPs according to the proportional representation system and 64 others by their respective sects under a winner-takes-all system.