The article is not about the voting age as someone emailed me back. It is about the Christian votes that are not well presented in the Districts-Division agreed upon in Doha for 2009 election. And reducing the voting age to 18 years old would farther weaken the representation of Christian votes in 2009 election. If the District-Divisions were based on Small-Districts as Bekerke and the Lebanese Forces were calling for then it would not matter if voting age were lowered.

However, based on districts agreed upon in Doha, the call for Tayyar MP's to lower the voting age to 18 years old is just an attempt to strengthen Hezbollah voters since Aoun counting on Shiites and pro Syrian-Iranian votes and trying to silence the Christian votes under the pretext of representing the Christians...

The Lebanese Constitution states that the parliament is divided in half between Christian and Muslim therefore any District Division or any electoral laws do not take into consideration the well representation of Christian votes to elect half the parliament are unconstitutional. Only small districts as Bekerke and Lebanese Forces are calling for achieve a good representation for the Christian votes.

Important Notes:
1- Since 2005 election and Hezbollah is demanding to lower the voting age to 18 years old. Meanwhile, Hezbollah refuses smaller districts.

2- Based on the District-Division agreed upon in Doha, Christians can only vote about 35% of their MPs. lowering the Voting age to 18 years and based on Doha District-Division weaken the Christians votes and allow them to vote less then 30% of their MPs. However, If the Electoral System for 2009 was to be based on better districts division, then lowering the voting age will not matter.
 

 Urgent Re. Christian Votes and the 2009 Lebanese parliamentary election

Ironically, Tayyar is leading the demand to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 to please his ally Hezbollah who have been calling for this since the last election.  Lowering the legal voting age to 18 years with an electoral system based on 1960 districts is unconstitutional and it will give Hezbollah the majority and crush the Christians votes.  In addition, Tayyar is also supporting Hezbollah armed democracy. Hezbollah armed fighters, killing and terrorizing Lebanese as they did in Beirut and mount Lebanon on May-7 can vote.  Meanwhile, the Lebanese army and all Lebanese security personal are not allowed to vote!

Therefore, as Christians, we call on Bkerke, Lebanese Forces and the Christians of the Cedar Reolution to keep up their demand for smaller district that makes Christian votes count if the legal electoral age is lowered to 18 years old.  We also call on them to keep up their demands so the Lebanese Cabinet Statement include a clear solution to all weapons outside the government's control.