Daily Star - Baroud: We need new election law, monitors - September 18, 2010

By Simona Sikimic

BEIRUT: “We should have a fully independent commission that monitors elections … [and] we need a new election law,” Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud said on Friday.

Baroud’s comments came as part of a European Union-backed seminar, “Supervisory Commission on Electoral Campaign (SCEC) experiences in 2009 parliamentary elections: Building consensus on the way forward” which evaluated the progress, and failings, of the Supervisory Commission.

“The work that has been conducted was really very serious,” said the Interior Minister. “[But] we can see that the success we have achieved was not enough and [the SCEC] should be provided with future powers and prerogatives.”

The SCEC was agreed upon by the 2008 Doha Agreements that ended the 2008 internal hostilities and brought in several legal electoral reforms including one-day voting, abolition of voter cards, use of indelible ink and access for external observers.

The Commission was mandated with monitoring campaign spending and electoral media coverage, but due to various administrative hold-ups it did not begin operations until three months prior to the May 2009 election.

It was designed as an administrative unit attached directly to the Interior Ministry but received extensive support from the EU and other international organizations.

The SCEC has since been disbanded by a Council of Ministers vote.

But loud objections from Baroud, as well as international observers and other politicians and professionals, have since called for its reinstatement, insisting that it be awarded a permanent mandate to monitor all future municipal, national and by-elections.

“The SCEC represents an important innovation for the Middle East region, being one of the few bodies established for supervising two crucial sectors of the election campaign: the media and campaign expenses,” said European Union political section head, Elsa Fenet. “These two areas are as essential to a genuine contest as they are difficult to regulate and enforce.”

“The role played by the SCEC in the 2009 elections is unanimously acknowledged as pivotal for opening the way to creating equal conditions for election contestants in Lebanon,” she said.

Objections have been voiced, however, that extending the Commission’s powers would actually undermine the democratic process, especially if rules detailing its committee member selection were not seriously tightened.

“We do not need the SCEC in its current [form] and in this current system,” said Beirut Bar representative, Majed Fayad, who was not a keynote speaker at the event.

“I do not believe that there is an entity of people that could be established not on the basis of confessional or political affiliations,” Fayad said.

“Be sincere with yourselves,” he urged.

Over the course of its investigations, the Commission reported well over 2,000 media complaints which included cases of slander, defamation and hate speech.

Ultimately, however, only six of these complaints were referred up to the Court of Publications which alone has the power to fine offenders.

Media outlets that were not referred to the court were either slapped with warnings or asked to issue retractions.

Every single media outlet in the country received at least one warning, explained former SCEC president, judge Ghassan Abou Alwan. But with no power – other than referral up to the court – to force compliance, few chose to do so.

The Commission’s scope over the print media was further limited by ambiguities in the law which rather oddly only established its supremacy over the broadcast media.

The internet and other electronic media were also not included in its mandate.

The Commission has been widely criticized for its slack crackdown on campaign spending violations, but inadequate resources, the secrecy of much campaign spending and various loopholes in legislation, all hampered its ability to make serious progress on the issue, explained Abou Alwan.

Existing rules limit the amount an individual candidate can spend on an electoral campaign but do not inhibit party or electoral list spending, which is often the main source of campaign revenue.

Even in cases where candidates spent their own money, they were largely reimbursed for the expenses by their parties after the election, the SCEC report found.

Out of 587 candidates that ran for election in 2009, around two thirds handed in an expense balance sheet for auditing by the Commission.

Most of these were either flawed, or left blank, making it exceedingly difficult for the Commission to investigate allegations of abuse, Alwan said.