Two reasons that may lead to municipal elections' postponement

The head of the National Defense, Internal Affairs, and Municipalities Committee, MP Jihad Al-Samad, emphasized the necessity of holding municipal and mukhtars' elections on schedule, provided that the conditions of the southern provinces of Tyre and Nabatieh are taken into consideration.

This article is originally published in, translated from Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

Sources mentioned that some deputies have proposed exempting border villages under bombardment from elections through a law issued by the parliament, recalling the exemption of the occupied border strip from elections in 1998.

Commenting on this proposal, Al-Samad told "Al-Akhbar" that "this proposal is akin to isolating certain areas, and the war is not confined to the south and Nabatieh, as the enemy violates all regions, having previously targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut and Baalbek."

"Al-Akhbar" noted that there is a fundamental issue that the deputies discussing the election file during the National Defense, Internal Affairs, and Municipalities Committee's meeting in the parliament avoided addressing. 

It concerns the mechanism of conducting elections in the governorates of Beirut and Tripoli, ensuring Christian-Muslim parity in municipal councils as usual, based on a political consensus that is currently unavailable.

It is expected that this issue, when raised, will pose a significant challenge given the difficulty of reaching an agreement, leading some to speculate that the Beirut elections could be one of the main reasons for the potential disruption of the elections.