The right to challenge the constitutionality of a certain law is limited to the following parties:

• President of the Republic
• Speaker of Parliament
• Prime Minister
• A minimum of 10 Members of Parliament
• Recognized religious authorities in matters pertaining strictly to personal status, freedom of belief and religion and freedom of education.

According to the Constitutional Council, the appeal should be submitted no later than 15 days after the issuance of the law in the Official Gazette or any other official publication. Thus, the Constitutional Council has been denied its natural right to question the validity of the laws, not to mention that political consensus might thwart its supervisory role, as the parliamentarians might approve unconstitutional laws without having those challenged since nobody except themselves is entitled to call these laws into question.

Parliamentary Elections Law

Article 42 of the Lebanese Constitution stipulates that “the general parliamentary elections shall occur within a sixty-day period preceding the expiration of the Parliament’s mandate.” This article was amended three times but the sixty-day period remained unchanged.

However, the current parliamentary elections law No. 25 approved on October 8, 2008 stated in its 44th article that the “voters shall be summoned to vote by virtue of a decree and a period of ninety days at least shall lapse between the publication of this decree and the elections day,” which stands in contradiction with the provisions of Article 42 of the Lebanese Constitution.

Status Quo

The term of the current Parliament expires on June 20, 2013. Amid the diametric divides over the optimal electoral law and the slight likelihood of reaching an agreement, the elections might be impossible to hold should the constitutional periods pass without calling on the electoral bodies to participate in the elections. Some believe that the decree should be issued before March 21, while others argue that the deadline is April 21, so will the approval of a new electoral law sort out this contradiction? 

NB: The decree calling on voters to participate in the 2013 elections was issued on March 4, 2013.