The Lebanese Parliament is scheduled to convene next week to discuss the postponement of the municipal elections for the third time in a row.
The term of the municipal and elective councils in Lebanon ended for the first time in 2022. The elections were postponed for a year to coincide with the parliamentary elections. But in 2023, they were delayed again for another year by a parliamentary decision.
As the extended term ends on May 30, political figures underlined the need to hold the elections across the country, with the exception of three governorates out of seven, namely the South, Nabatieh and Baalbek-Hermel, “for security reasons related to the Israeli war in the South.”
The head of Parliament’s Defense, Interior and Municipal Affairs, MP Jihad Al-Samad, said he submitted a draft-law to Parliament that would extend the mandate of the municipal and elective councils for another year, noting in remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat that the proposal will be in the agenda of the session that is expected to be held next week.
“During the month of Ramadan, we held a session of the Defense and Interior Committee in the presence of Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi, and there were two opinions; The first calls for holding elections, excluding the three governorates, and the second calls for postponing them in light of the existing circumstances,” Al-Samad said.
Although the government says it is prepared to organize the vote, “the first indication of its lack of seriousness was not including financial allocations for holding the elections in the 2024 budget.”
The Interior Ministry announced last week that Mawlawi issued a decree to invite municipal electoral bodies in the districts of Mount Lebanon Governorate to elect members of municipal councils and mukhtars on May 12, 2024.
Political parties voiced their objection to postponing the elections. The head of the Lebanese Forces Party, Samir Geagea, described such decision as “an additional crime against Lebanon and the Lebanese.”
Geagea addressed the “axis of resistance and its allies” by saying: “After you deprived the Lebanese of an actual state, and after you took them to hell, and you disrupted the presidential elections, today you are working hard to deprive them of local authorities.”
Geagea called on the Free Patriotic Movement, which is headed by MP Gebran Bassil, “not to participate in this crime, and not to attend the expected session, in order to force the government to organize municipal elections in all Lebanese regions except those witnessing military operations.”
The Amal Movement, Hezbollah, and the Progressive Socialist Party, in particular, support postponing the elections, while mainly the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb party oppose it.
