Lebanese general election, 2017
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All 128 seats to the Parliament of Lebanon 65 seats needed for a majority |
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General elections were supposed to be held in Lebanon in 2014. However, the failure of Parliament in electing a new President, two thirds of the body extended its own term until 2017 then 2018.
Following the last election, it took several months to form a new government. Saad Hariri eventually became prime minister in a March 14 government. About a year later, Walid Jumblatt's PSP broke away from the March 14 alliance and withdrew its ministers. Jumblatt then traveled to Syria for the first time in decades and met President Bashar al-Assad. After the government fell over the issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a new government was formed by Najib Mikati that consisted of March 8 alliance parties, as well as the PSP.
Over the course of the Syrian civil war, fissures started to grow in Lebanon as March 14 parties supported the opposition in Syria and March 8 parties were ostensibly supportive of the Syrian government, particularly in the early stages, and faced accusation from the opposition and its affiliated media of kowtowing to the Syrian government. As the conflict started to spill over into Lebanon, both via refugees and Lebanon's own diverse demographics that are broadly reflective of Syria's own diversity, tensions started to grow. A spate of sectarian kidnappings and threats followed, some of which turned fatal.
On 22 March 2013, Mikati resigned citing a negative climate over the appointment of a committee to oversee the election and the extension of Internal Security Forces (ISF) head Ashraf Rifi, who was expected to retire in April. On 5 April, a new March 14-backed consensus candidate for prime minister was announced, Tammam Salam.
In June 2017 a new electoral law was passed, replacing the previous system under which the 128 members of parliament were elected from 26 multi-member constituencies in which voters cast as many votes as there were seats in their constituency and the candidates with the highest number of votes within each religious community were elected. The new electoral law instituted proportional representation in 15 multi-member constituencies.
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Wikipedia