There is no doubt that Article (58) of the Elections Law is marred by legislative flaws, especially in the unnecessary overlap between paragraphs (3) and (4) thereof.

Paragraph (3) stipulates that:
“If the vacant seat is one of the seats reserved for women or youth, this seat will be filled by the candidate who follows the winning candidate of women or youth from the same party list.”

While paragraph (4) came to state that:
“If the representative who won on the party list resigns or is expelled from the party to which he belongs by a final decision, this seat will be filled by the next candidate on the list.”

This means that – in accordance with the allocation rule – when the legislator dealt with cases of resignation or dismissal, it explicitly specified the mechanism for filling the vacant seat through the candidate who follows the resigned or dismissed representative in the order of the list, without linking this to his allocation from the women’s or youth seat.

Personally, and as a lawyer for more than thirty-six years, I see that the text of Paragraph (4) is clear and explicit in regulating the cases of resignation and dismissal, and leaves no room for applying the provision of Paragraph (3) to them. Therefore, in order to correct this legislative deficiency with an explicit amendment, it is necessary to apply the special text that regulated this situation, which is for the candidate who succeeds the dismissed representative.