Previous articles in this series have mentioned that the legislator has made the parliamentary seat at the general electoral district level predominantly for the party list rather than for the winning candidate from that list, and that the continuance of membership in the House of Representatives is contingent on maintaining membership in the party from which the member was elected and won the seat. Therefore, if this deputy resigns or is expelled through procedures taken by the party according to its constitution, and endorsed by the judiciary with a final judgment, then he loses his parliamentary seat.
It was also mentioned previously that the legislator designated subsection (a) of Article (58) of the Election Law for the House of Representatives to regulate the matter of filling the vacant seat at the general electoral district level.
After presenting the first item from that subsection as the general rule for filling the seat, the legislator included the second item to regulate filling the vacancy specifically for the seat reserved for Christians, Circassians, and Chechens (the traditional quota). Then, the third item of the same subsection was included to regulate filling the vacancy specifically for the seat of women or youth (the non-traditional quota).
Then, the legislator concluded the subsection with the fourth item, designated for the termination of the party affiliation, i.e., the resignation of the deputy or his expulsion from the party.
In practical application, the seat of the winning deputy from the party list "Labor Party," the honorable deputy Mohammad Al-Jarrah, became vacant after a final judicial ruling confirming the validity of his expulsion from the party.
A literal application of the fourth item requires that this seat be filled by the next candidate in the party list, Dr. Rola Al-Haroub, which would lead to the waste of the value that the legislator aimed to protect according to the other provisions of the same subsection. However, interpreting the fourth item in light of those provisions leads to the necessity of filling the seat from another candidate for the youth category in the party list, Mr. Hamza Khalil, which is what the Council of Commissioners of the Independent Electoral Commission has adopted.
Therefore, to avoid the scholarly debate stirred by the referred practice, it might be more appropriate to rephrase the fourth item of subsection (a) of Article (58) of the Election Law to explicitly state filling the seat in the manner specified in the other items of the subsection.
