Lebanon alarming
demographic transformations behind shelving controversial voting law
A
controversial draft law calling for the reduction of voting age from 21 to 18 was quickly
shelved by the Parliament Wednesday as a result of fears that it would radically alter
Christian-Muslim voter ratio in favor of the Muslim voters.
The
draft law was proposed in 1998 by the National Gathering Parliamentary Bloc, then
comprising MPs Hussein Husseini, Selim Hoss, Omar Karami, Boutros Harb, Nassib Lahoud,
Nayla Mouawad, Najah Wakim, Kamil Ziadeh, and Elias Skaff among others. Soon 102 deputies
signed the draft law, transforming it into a parliamentary petition.
Currently, opponents of the draft law, mainly Patriarch Sfeir
and Christian MPs, demand the restoration of the Lebanese citizenship and electoral ticket
to Lebanese immigrants permanently residing abroad in tandem with the reduction of the
voting age. This should be viewed as measure aiming to maintain the electoral demographic
balance, knowing that the majority of Lebanon’s eight million immigrants are
predominantly Maronite, according to Patriarch Sfeir.
The head
of the powerful Maronite church has long contended that Lebanese emigrants total about
eight million with Maronites making up the overwhelming majority. Muslims are currently
believed to hold a 55-45 percent majority among Lebanon’s population at home, which
are estimated at 4.5 million by the latest U.N. statistics.
According to As-Safir, a statistical study on the demographics
of the electorate by researcher Kamil Feghali reveals the following:
In the early 1900s the demographic situation was largely in
favor of Christians. On the basis of the number of eligible voters born starting 1910, the
study reveals that 68.8 percent of the electorate was Christian, 29.2 percent Muslims, and
the rest Jews.
Based on the number of eligible voters born starting 1930, the
Christian electorate constituted 52.4 percent of the total voter population, while Muslims
constituted 46.5 percent.
Calculations based on the number of voters born starting 1939
show a par between the Christian and Muslim electorate with each claiming 49.7 of the
electorate.
The percentage of Christian electorate shrunk to 36.5 percent
while that of the Muslims grew to 60.1 percent on the basis of the number of eligible
voters born starting 1960. The percentage of Christian electorate further decreased to
27.5 percent while the percentage of Muslims climbed to 72.4 for eligible voters born
starting 1979.
The percentage of decrease by Christian electorate between 1975
and 1979 was between one and three percent, while the percentage of increase within the
Muslim electorate between 1975 and 1979 registered a corresponding one to three percent.
Calculated in 2005, Feghali forecasts that the percentage of
Christians within the electorate population would be around 26-27 percent while that of
Muslims would be around 73-74 percent.
However, Feghali explained that the percentages of religions and
sects within the Lebanese electorate is quite different from the percentages of religions
and sects within actual voters. This, he said, was evident in the results of the post-war
elections which registered a 34 to 66 percent Christian-Moslem ratio among actual voters. |
