Lebanese President Michel Aoun has returned to Parliament the legislative elections law approved by the parliament last Tuesday, requesting a review of this legislation, which brings the polling closer to next March instead of May.
Aoun said - in a statement published by the Presidency of the Republic today, Friday - that the new amendments were imposed only once, and that shortening the constitutional deadline for elections leads to voters reluctance to vote. He believed that the law deprives more than 10,600 people of the right to vote for not reaching the voting age.
Al-Jazeera correspondent Johnny Tanios reported that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri subsequently set a session to reconsider the law and re-vote it next Tuesday.
The correspondent explained that the Lebanese president's move was expected, given that those close to him had confirmed during the past days that he would return the law to the parliament.
He pointed out that Representative Gebran Bassil, head of the Free Patriotic Movement - founded by Michel Aoun - had high-ceilinged positions in which he refused to bring the election date closer, and stressed more than once that this step will not pass and there will be legal procedures to confront it.
Parliament will reconsider the electoral law amendments and then re-vote them, and the passage of the legislation requires the votes of an absolute majority (half the number of members plus one vote).
If the law is passed, it will be referred to the President of the Republic for his signature, and he is not entitled to return it to the House of Representatives again.
If 5 days pass without the president signing it, the law automatically becomes effective.