Lebanon: Parliament Rejects Amendment to Lower Voting Age

Lebanon’s parliament has rejected today a hotly-debated constitutional amendment to lower the country’s voting age from 21 to 18, a proposition reported to have provoked Christian-Muslim tension and ignited concerns about the stability of the country’s tenuous power-sharing political system.

Anticipating the results, an editorial in today’s Daily Star chided the Christian members of Parliament for indulging an attitude prevalent among legislators across the religious spectrum that places “interests of their sect ahead of the interests of democracy and the country’s population as a whole.”

The controversial bill has predominantly rankled the Maronite Christian community, whose political leverage has diminished steadily over the years with their relative decline in birth rates and higher levels of emigration. Though no census has been issued in Lebanon since 1932, the Maronite community now represents an estimated 30 percent of the country’s population. According to analysis in the AFP, lowering the voting age would add more than 50,000 Christians and 175,000 Muslims to the electorate. To contend with the shifting demographics, Christian Maronite MPs have advocated including the votes of expatriates throughout the world.

“Christians fear the numbers,” says Paul Salem, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, in an interview with the AFP. “Mainly it is a fear that lowering the voting age might be the first step in rethinking the entire political structure.”

A two-thirds quorum is necessary to amend the constitution. In today’s vote, a mere 34 of the legislature’s 128 members voted for the measure, while 66 abstained and one voted against. The remaining 27 MPs refrained from attending the session.