TRIPOLI, Lebanon, 22 May 2005 — Lebanese Islamist movement Jammaa Islamiya said Friday that it would boycott legislative elections due to start in May owing to an “unjust” electoral law and excessive international interference. “We have decided to boycott the elections due to the electoral law and its unjust division of constituencies and the intervention of the great powers,” it said in a statement.
The complex electoral law guarantees parliamentary parity between the country’s Christians and Muslims, even though the Christians are in a minority. “Holding the elections on the basis of the prevailing law, which is criticized by the majority of political forces will not allow fair elections ... and public opinion is shocked by the level of intervention by the great powers and the submission of the political class to its diktats,” it added.
Jammaa Islamiya, traditionally seen as close to the assassinated Sunni former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is a meaningful electoral force in majority Sunni cities such as Saida, Beirut and Tripoli. Christian figures including Christian hard-line leader Michel warned that the law would disrupt the country’s fragile Christian-Muslim coexistence.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Omar Karameh, who unsuccessfully tried to bring together a government in the aftermath of the Hariri murder, announced that he would not be standing for re-election in his home city of Tripoli. Speaking in an interview with a private Lebanese television station, the pro-Syrian Karameh said he too did not agree with the electoral law and accused the opposition of using its financial superiority to unfair advantage during the campaign.
Karameh, who finally gave up the struggle to form a government on April 13, admitted his allies were facing a severe challenge against an emboldened opposition, which has already managed to grab half the seats in Beirut due to a lack of opponents. Lebanese elections are to be held on four consecutive Sundays from May 29.
The sister of Hariri and another candidate have won two of 23 seats up for grabs in south Lebanon, raising to 11 the number of seats clinched before a vote is cast. Bahia Hariri and Osama Saad, both running in Sidon, won by default because no other candidates ran to challenge them, officials said yesterday.
Both are on the electoral ticket of a pro-Syria coalition led by Shiite Muslim Hezbollah resistance group and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Bahia, a lawmaker in the outgoing Parliament, has been an active member in the anti-Syrian opposition since the killing of her brother last February.
But unwilling to challenge her, the pro-Syrian coalition named Bahia on its ticket though she had said she would run as an independent.
