VZCZCXYZ0387
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHLB #0164/01 0501559
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 191559Z FEB 10
FM AMEMBASSY BEIRUT
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6573
INFO RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS PRIORITY 3795
RUEHDM/AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS PRIORITY 3918
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV PRIORITY 1571
RUEHAK/AMEMBASSY ANKARA PRIORITY 4036
RUEHRH/AMEMBASSY RIYADH PRIORITY 3624
RUEHEG/AMEMBASSY CAIRO PRIORITY 0035
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L BEIRUT 000164 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/19/2020 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM SOCI LE
SUBJECT: CABINET APPROVES MUNICIPAL ELECTORAL REFORMS, BUT 
PARLIAMENT IS NEXT HURDLE 
 
REF: A. 09 BEIRUT 195 
     ¶B. 09 BEIRUT 337 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Michele J. Sison for reasons 
1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
¶1. (C) Summary:  Despite pressure from multiple sides to 
delay, the Lebanese municipal elections are still scheduled 
for June 2009.  In January Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud 
presented a draft bill to cabinet containing a menu of 
electoral reforms, including measures to create standardized 
pre-printed ballots, set aside a quota for female candidates, 
directly elect council presidents and deputies, and introduce 
proportional voting.  Although many politicians have opposed 
one or more of the reforms, seeing them as undermining 
existing power structures, the cabinet has approved a 
surprisingly high proportion of them.  Baroud will now redact 
the bill and it will move to parliament, where many believe 
differences of opinion and opposition to reform could cause 
it to stall.  End Summary. 
 
BAROUD'S DRAFT LAW FRAMES DEBATE 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (U) On January 19, Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud 
introduced a draft law for municipal elections to the 
cabinet.  Simultaneously, the cabinet voted to extend the 
term of the sitting councils by a month, thus extending the 
deadline for elections to the end of June.  The cabinet also 
approved Baroud's proposal to reduce council terms from six 
to five years.  Although most political observers speculated 
that the majority of parties would seek to postpone the 
elections on a technical basis, Baroud has consistently 
maintained publicly that his ministry was ready logistically 
to carry out the municipal election in the spring with or 
without the reforms. 
 
¶3. (U) Baroud's draft electoral law called for several major 
reforms: pre-printed ballots, a 30% quota for female 
candidates, direct election of council presidents and their 
deputies, and proportional representation in larger 
districts.  Baroud, who is widely respected for his expertise 
in electoral processes, anticipated many of the cabinet's 
objections to the reforms and included comprehensive 
responses in the materials submitted to the cabinet.  In 
fact, the careful construction of the draft law ensured that 
any individual proposed reform could be removed without 
affecting the overall law.  In addition to the reforms 
actually proposed in his draft law, Baroud also voiced 
support for a constitutional amendment lowering the voting 
age to 18 years of age, though privately he indicated to us 
that it would be difficult to stick to the existing electoral 
schedule if such an amendment were passed. 
 
CABINET SURPRISE 
---------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) Although the cabinet has made few substantive 
decisions since being seated in December, in mid-February it 
approved a number of Baroud's proposals during several 
sessions of debate.  On February 11, the cabinet voted to 
approve the most fundamental reform -- the use of pre-printed 
ballots.  Traditionally, candidates create and distribute 
their own ballots, which discourages voters from splitting 
their votes and allows parties visually to monitor voting at 
the polls.  The proposal approved by the cabinet stipulates 
that Baroud's interior ministry (MOI) will print a 
standardized ballot for each contest and distribute the 
ballot at the polls on election day. 
 
¶5. (SBU) The most controversial reform, which the cabinet 
approved on February 17, was implementing proportional 
representation in all municipal elections, not just in larger 
districts as originally proposed by Baroud.  Unlike 
parliamentary elections, municipal elections have not 
previously followed a sectarian formula.  Local candidates 
have run on negotiated unified lists that were often 
affiliated with local powerbrokers.  With this reform, each 
council would be drawn from competing electoral lists in 
proportion to the percentage of the vote each list garners in 
the poll.  Although some political figures, such as Labor 
Minister Boutros Harb, have publicly decried the proposed 
change as opening the door to paralysis on local councils, 
its goal is to increase participation by outsiders, since any 
list that obtains at least 6% of the vote will win 
 
representation on the council.  For his part, Free Patriotic 
Movement (FPM) head Michel Aoun lobbied for linking 
proportional representation to the splitting of Beirut into 
three electoral districts, but the latter proposal has not 
been approved. 
 
¶6. (SBU) The cabinet also approved reserving a 20% quota for 
female candidates on each list instead of the 30% proposed by 
Baroud.  That such a reform measure passed in any form is 
surprising, given the general absence of female politicians 
from Lebanese political life.  While there is no legal bar to 
female political participation in politics, social mores and 
security concerns reduce female participation, and only four 
women -- all of them from political dynasties -- currently 
serve in parliament.  However, many more women are involved 
in municipal government than in national government.  Even 
so, the barriers women face are underscored by several recent 
studies indicating that women are actually more likely to 
vote for a male candidate than a woman, believing that a 
woman has too many family responsibilities and mistrusting 
her capacity. 
 
NOT ALL PROPOSALS APPROVED 
-------------------------- 
 
¶7. (C) Despite initial internal disagreement the cabinet 
approved many of Baroud's proposals, but some key proposals 
remain pending.  Contacts say that Prime Minister Saad Hariri 
is opposed to one -- direct election of council presidents 
and deputies -- because he views strong, popularly elected 
council leaders in the majority Sunni cities as a threat to 
his position as Sunni political leader.  Harb told us on 
February 18 that Aoun's proposed division of the Beirut 
municipality, which Hariri and his Christian allies also 
oppose, would similarly not be approved. 
 
¶8. (C) On February 17 the cabinet also gave its approval for 
parliament to debate Speaker Nabih Berri's proposal to modify 
the constitution to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 years 
of age -- something that did not figure in Baroud's draft 
law.  Such a change would add approximately 283,000 new 
voters, according to Baroud.  Some Christian politicians 
insinuate that the amendment would sharply increase the 
number of Muslim voters, but Richard Chambers of the 
International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) 
estimated that the overall increase in the percentage of 
Muslim voters would be approximately one percent, most of it 
concentrated in Muslim-majority regions.  Even so, Christian 
leaders are attempting to link the amendment to a proposal to 
allow expatriate Lebanese (many of them Christian) to vote. 
Complicating matters further, contacts say Aoun opposes 
Berri's proposed amendment -- despite the fact that the two 
are coalition partners -- fearing that Christian youth added 
to the rolls would vote against him.  Berri has scheduled a 
parliamentary debate on the amendment for February 22 and 23. 
 
DRAFT LAW MAY WITHER IN PARLIAMENT 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶9.  C) On February 17, the cabinet directed Baroud to redraft 
his proposed electoral law to consolidate the approved 
proposals, then submit it to parliament for action.  The bill 
will have to pass through parliament's defense, justice, and 
finance committees before coming to a floor vote.  Many 
suspect that the law will wither along the way.  Harb told us 
on February 18 that the cabinet approved the proposals so 
that it could appear to be active, but that all the 
disagreements aired in cabinet would play out in parliament. 
Baroud himself implied to the Ambassador on February 18 that 
the process in parliament would be slow but that "even if the 
law is not passed before the elections, we have put the ideas 
out for discussion."  Aoun meanwhile has said repeatedly to 
the press that it is more important to enact reforms than to 
hold elections on time.  Future MP Oqab Saqr told poloff on 
February 18 that the battle over the elections would begin 
with the February 22 parliamentary debate on amending the 
constitution, during which he predicted the majority would 
stage a walk-out. 
 
¶10. (C) COMMENT:  Although getting the reforms out of the 
cabinet was merely the first step, Baroud is right that the 
debate has increased public awareness of the need for reform. 
 The draft bill as a whole is not in the interest of any of 
the traditional political players, since it weakens the 
ability of powerbrokers to manipulate the electoral system. 
 
Although the motivation varies from party to party and 
confession to confession, all sides have an interest in 
minimizing the impact of the proposed reforms. 
SISON