Parliament to discuss municipal vote postponement on April 25

Speaker Nabih Berri on Wednesday took a decision to schedule a legislative session for April 25 to decide on a draft law calling for the postponement of this year’s municipal elections, Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said after a meeting for the Parliament Bureau.

“I had a viewpoint that we can begin holding the municipal elections in the areas in which we can do that, but there is another viewpoint that says that we are in a state of war and that the Israeli enemy is sparing no areas in the south and the Bekaa,” Bou Saab said.

Bou Saab also said that there are concerns regarding the municipal council of Beirut, seeing as the lack of political consensus might lead to a new council in which equal power-sharing between Christians and Muslims is not respected.

“It is necessary to address the situation of Beirut’s municipality,” Bou Saab stressed.

The current municipal elections law does not stipulate a sectarian distribution of seats and a political agreement among the major political forces was behind preserving equal power-sharing in the capital in the previous electoral rounds.