Parliament committee OKs draft to lower voting age
Parliament”s Administration and Justice Committee approved a draft law Monday to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 for parliamentary polls in Lebanon. Parliament has yet to ratify the bill. "This requires a political consensus and constitutional amendment," committee chair MP Robert Ghanem explained.
On behalf of the committee, Ghanem also requested Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud, who is also an active member of the National Commission on Electoral Law (NCEL), to study a mechanism that enables expatriates to vote during the parliamentary polls.
"This process is a bit complicated, and we do not want to engage in a process that is unclear to citizens and would impede the elections," Ghanem added. As for the NCEL proposal, issued under the auspices of former Minister Fouad Boutros in 2006, he said a supreme administrative committee had been assigned to supervise and manage the 2009 electoral process.
The MP added that a subcommittee joining representatives of the Interior Ministry and the Bar Association had studied all the powers of the supreme committee.