A parliamentary election in Lebanon is slated for May, the first of its kind after 2009. The forthcoming election will be organized under a new electoral law, which was passed by the Lebanese parliament last June. Every Lebanese party is preparing for the long-awaited election, and many are expecting the election to bring a new future to the country and end the decades-long internal sectarian clashes.

The old electoral law, often referred as "The 1960 Law," is thought by many to be out of date. It was originally designed to reduce sectarian conflict by reserving a set number of parliamentary seats for different religious groups at a local level. However, the number of seats reserved for each religious group was based on 1932 census data and has not been updated, causing many people to feel the system unfairly penalizes some groups while favoring others as the demographics and size of different religious groups has obviously changed.

The current situation is complicated further due to the Taif Accord which came into force in 1989 following 15 years of civil war in Lebanon. The Taif Accord stipulated that on a national level, parliament should consist of 128 seats and be divided equally among Muslims and Christians.

Finally Lebanese law stipulates that various specific political positions should be occupied by people of specific religions – the president of Lebanon should be a Masonite Christian, the prime minister should be Sunni Muslim while the speaker of the parliament should be Shia Muslim.

The upcoming election itself means a breakthrough for the nearly decade-long political stalemate in Lebanon. The current members of parliament were elected in 2009 for what was meant as a four-year term. 

The delay in another election has been caused by political disagreement over the creation of a new electoral law, security concerns, a partial political vacuum and a two-year stalemate over the presidency, which led to the elections being postponed twice, allowing parliament to extend its own mandate twice. The restarting of the Lebanese parliament in May could therefore be seen as a success of political unity among various Lebanese political camps.

The coming election may bring some changes to the political environment inside Lebanon. On the one hand, this election may witness the “rise” of the young political generation of the country. Many new politicians, such as Taymour Jumblatt (son of Walid Jumblatt and the successor of the Jumblatt family – the most powerful Druze family in Lebanon), Tony Frangieh (grandson of Suleiman Frangieh, the famous Christian politician) and Michelle Tueni (daughter of Gebran Tueni, the famous journalist), will compete for a seat in the next parliament. The young politicians might harbor more ambitious and inclusive political visions than their fathers, and may further unite different political camps inside Lebanon.

On the other hand, the new electoral law, which is based on the new proportional representation system, will replace the old system which said that the candidate with the most votes would win their district. This meant that incumbent politicians were rarely dislodged and gave certain groups almost guaranteed large parliamentary blocs. By allowing rivals to enter parliament, the proportional system will effectively encourage cooperation among different political camps and different religious and sectarian groups.

A religion-driven patron-client relationship between political figures and their communities have dominated Lebanon’s political structure for decades. The upcoming election, with the new law in store, might significantly reform the makeup of political system in this nation.