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Powersharing Transitional Government – 1992

According to Khazan (Khazen), the balance of power both within Lebanon and between Beirut and Damascus had changed significantly by 1992. “Amid speculation and rumours in the press about the number of deputies, the Council of Ministers decided to adopt 134, an addition of 26 to the 108 agreed on in the Ta’if document. The stated reason for raising the number of deputies was to modify the representation of some sects (Druze and Greek Catholic). The tacit reason was to make the number 128 more acceptable to its opponents.”¹ Finally government adopted Law 154 in 1992 raised the number of parliamentary seats to 128 instead of 108, thus adding 29 new seats to the prewar parliament.² The additional nine and twenty nine seats were allocated in the following manner:

Maronite from 30 to 34, Greek Orthodox from 11 to 13, Greek Catholic from 6 to 8, Armenian Orthodox from 4 to 5, American catholic from 1 to 0, Protestant from 1 to 0, Minorities from 1 to 0, Sunni from 20 to 27, ShiÕa from 19 to 27, Druze from 6 to 8, and Alawite got 2 seats from none.³

1. Farid el. Khazan, “Lebanon’s First Postwar Parliamentary Election, 1992: An Imposed Choice,” 1992, accessed April 5, 2011, http://almashriq.hiof.no/ddc/projects/pspa/elections92-part1.html.
2. Bassel F. Salloukh, “The Limits of Electoral Engineering in Divided Societies: Elections in Postwar Lebanon,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 39 (2006): 644.
3. Ibid.