Oussama Safa, NOW Contributor

As the countdown to the June elections begins, the Lebanese political scene is slowly beginning to focus on the competing electoral programs, opposing candidate lists, and public campaigns and events. The main administrative body involved in the elections, the Interior Ministry, is scrambling to meet legal deadlines to ensure that all necessary preparations are being made on time ahead of voting day on June 7. While all eyes are on the ministry’s efforts, other institutions tasked with ensuring the integrity and transparency of the elections have been ignored. The Constitutional Council is but one example of these overlooked bodies, without which there would be no constitutional safeguard for the polling.

As international election observers prepare to descend on Lebanon to monitor – and most probably give a clean bill of health to – the democratic aspects of the electoral process, the abnormalities of the country’s electoral law will surely be lost on them. For starters, the basic fact that the law was passed last October without its constitutionality being questioned at all should have been reason enough to alarm the international community, who, in hindsight, should have insisted on a minimum of international standards in it. Instead, Lebanon was applauded for passing the law at all, irrespective of its undemocratic nature and backward provisions. What is worse is that the election observers who are preparing for what promises to be a highly entertaining mission to Lebanon have not even mentioned that the law does not meet minimum international standards of integrity, transparency and equality.

Instead, the debate is currently centered on whether the country will be stable enough to even hold the elections on June 7 or whether the voting should take place over two days instead of one. But this debate overshadows the serious flaws of the electoral process and misleads the public. What the international community, along with Lebanese civil society, ought to focus on is the fact that the highest judicial authority that oversees electoral disputes, the Constitutional Council, is being crippled by the same political class whose representatives are candidates in these elections. The five members needed to be seated on the council for its functioning have still not been appointed after years of delay. To illustrate the absurdity of the situation, imagine elections in the United States occurring without the Supreme Court.

The Constitutional Council is important for many reasons, including that it backs the constitutionality and legality of the electoral law, which is necessary to validate the process and quiet opposition to the law; it reviews appeals by candidates and rules over electoral violations; it reviews breaches submitted by the newly set-up electoral monitoring commission; and it provides a measure of confidence among the public and observers. Absent the council, the Lebanese are left with the Ministry of Interior as the only institution overseeing the validity of the elections. The ministry is the right body to issue a declaration on the technical aspects of the elections, but the political, legal and constitutional characteristics of the polls are a matter of shared responsibility between the ministry and the Constitutional Council.

The work of the electoral commission established within the Interior Ministry is in serious jeopardy if the Constitutional Council does not get up and running. All violations reported by the commission, including those on campaign financing, electoral advertising and media coverage, are to go before the Constitutional Council. If the latter does not exist, not only will these violations end up by the wayside, the country will have missed an important and interesting precedent of monitoring breaches by a national commission, albeit limited in scope and mandate. If the commission is not aided by a constitutional body, its efforts are at risk of being scuttled. And in a country where banking secrecy is a matter of pride, wily candidates in the elections find it easy to set up shadow accounts or dispense election money through indirect channels or by in-kind donations.

The role of the international community in the upcoming elections cannot be understated. Observers – in large numbers – are welcome, but they should be firm in demanding redress of the electoral process, particularly in emphasizing the importance of naming and appointing the five judges needed to sit on the Constitutional Council. Detractors might say that in the current climate of consensus decision-making, appointing members to the council will surely be compromised. While this argument is not without merit, having a Constitutional Council remains of utmost necessity if the electoral process is to gain a modicum of legitimacy.

With courtesy of www.nowlebanon.com, Beirut, Lebanon