As much as I talk about Israel, I like to think that Mock the Casbah helps bring the rest of the Middle East into The Times of Zion. Now, I understand that it has been a while since we last met, and I do apologize, but trying to find full-time work in the District of Columbia has turned out to be, well, full time work. Last time around we spoke of the Iranian elections and Syria, and when you talk about Iran and Syria, best bets are that you are next going to start talking about Lebanon. That bet would be correct.
Democracy or at least what we understand to be democracy but is actually more like a republic (but let’s not get into that, that’s what Wikipedia is for), is quite tricky. That is especially true in the Middle East. According to Freedom House, the freedom-focused watchdog, the Middle East is 2% free. 20 countries and 395 million people. 2% rated as free. According to Freedom House “Freedom is possible only in democratic political environments where governments are accountable to their own people; the rule of law prevails; and freedoms of expression, association, and belief, as well as respect for the rights of minorities and women, are guaranteed.” So who gets the honor of being called “free” Well, if you try to stick to facts and rationality and not emotions, you shouldn’t be surprised that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country who is considered free. With a rating of 7 being the “least free,” Israel is at a solid 1.5. Saudi Arabia is, also not surprisingly, is rated a 7 out of 7.
I bring all of this up because we’ve all gotten a bit excited in the past month or so over the elections in Israel. Well, Israel isn’t the only Middle Eastern country with elections. As I said before, Israel is the only country rated as “free” by Freedom House. However, there is a rating of “partly free,” which is held by Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Kuwait, and itty bitty Lebanon. All of these countries have elections which vary in their degrees of fairness, but nonetheless they actually tend to be quite competitive. Even if the elections yield a government of Islamists, like Egypt, or elect a government that struggles to gain legitimacy and a monopoly on the use of force, as in Libya, they do have elections, and these elections do have meaning.
This brings us to Lebanon, which having an election of its own on June 9th. It might be a little early to be getting into the game, but it’s not like I’m CNN or FOX looking to fill air time by speculating about the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. In fact, because it’s just a parliamentary election and not a presidential election, I won’t be doing a break-down of known candidates as I did in my piece on Iran. This piece is going to focus on a few things. Firstly, the controversy over the proposed new election law. Secondly, the problems Lebanon faces going into the final period of the election season.
Before we move on, I feel like you need a refresher on the Lebanese system of government. To put it simply, Lebanon is a confessionalist parliamentary republic. This system is intended to deter sectarian conflict and attempts to fairly represent the demographic distribution of the 18 recognized religious groups in government. By the National Pact of 1943, negotiated between Maronite and Muslim leaders, the President (chosen by the unicameral Chamber of Deputies) is always a Maronite, the Prime Minister must be a Sunni, and the Speaker of parliament must be a Shi’a Muslim. Similar divisions are present throughout the government and the military. Out of the 128 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 64 are allotted to the Christian sects and 64 to the Muslims, and those are further split between their respective denominations. It is prudent to mention that there has not been an official census since the French did one during their Mandate in 1932. This is how the Shi’a, who are clearly the most populous sect in the country (making up somewhere around a third of the population) only receive 21% of the seats in the Chamber. It’s also how the Maronite Christians, who represent around 22% of the population, get over a quarter of the seats.
There are 26 multi-member constituencies (the opposite of the American system), and however many seats are allotted to a district is how many votes voters get to cast. The candidates who get the most votes win. You don’t have to actually be in Lebanon; the country uses a curious expatriate system. There are few countries that value their citizens living abroad as the Lebanese, especially the Christians, who see their émigrés as a much needed bolster against Muslim influence. Plus, the remittances from said émigrés represent a surprisingly large percentage of their GDP.
We should also mention something that doesn’t get talked about often with Lebanon. Lebanon is essentially a feudal country. Known as the za’im system, it’s a leftover of the Ottoman millet system whereby religious minorities were given a certain degree of self governance, and during the waning days of the empire in the 19th century degenerated into a system of local warlords and influence holders. It’s why you can read about Lebanese politics a hundred years ago and still hear many of the same names you would hear today. The Gemayel’s (I’ve found about a dozen ways that name has been transliterated into English), Chamoun’s, Jumblatt’s, all have been around. Also, there isn’t exactly a whole lot of turnover in Lebanese politics, allowing people like Chamber of Deputies Nabih Berri to remain in their positions for decades at a time. What it all means is that, accusations of gerrymandering due to the electoral system aside, you have a system of powerful family names not unlike the Five Families in The Godfather, and Lebanon has been playing their game for the last 70 years.
Also, we have to remember one of the biggest divisions in Lebanese politics, the March 14 vs March 8 movements. Simply put, the March 14 Movement is the anti-Syrian party that coalesced behind Saad Hariri after the assassination of his father in 2005 that soon led to the withdrawal of the Syrian military after 30 years of occupation. The March 8 Alliance, led by Aoun, Berri’s Amal, and Hezbollah, is the pro-Syrian group. This alliance currently holds a majority of 68 seats in the Chamber.
With all of that in mind, it should not be surprising that the Lebanese (especially younger citizens) are so keen on crafting a new election law. Known as the Orthodox or Orthodox Gathering law, it suggests making the entire country one electoral district. Each community would be electing its own representatives, which in effect means that people would only be able to vote for representatives of their own sects. The motion has had a decidedly mixed reaction. Some Christian groups, led by Free Patriotic Movement (second largest bloc in the Chamber of Deputies) leader Michel Aoun, argue that the law would allow “proper representation of all Christian communities.” The Shi’a groups Hezbollah and Amal have also backed it, ostensibly because it would help to strengthen their hold on the government.
However, despite the support of the influential Aoun and Hezbollah, the Orthodox Gathering law has garnered a significant amount of criticism. Prime Minister Najib Mikati has led the charge, despite criticism early in his premiership that he was a puppet of Hezbollah and the Pro-Syrian parties. “The Orthodox law will legalize federalism and cantons” has been his battle cry, and he has been joined by Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, independent Christian MPs, and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party. Former Prime Minister and current head of the Future Movement bloc in the Chamber (while Saad Hariri wallows in a self imposed exile in Saudi Arabia because he thinks he will be killed by Hezbollah or its allies) Fouad Siniora blasted the Orthodox Gathering proposal as “It is a reactionary proposal because it calls on sects to elect their own representatives. This contradicts the spirit of the Constitution.”
The problem with the Orthodox law isn’t just that it does in fact contradict the Constitution’s mission of deterring sectarian conflict, but it doesn’t allow any wiggle room for those people, secular or otherwise, who don’t really identity with any of the recognized religious communities. If you’re an atheist, why would you want to vote for someone whose entire candidacy is based around representing a religious sect? If anything the law would, as Michael Young puts it, “is bound to isolate Lebanese Christians further, while hardening sectarianism nationally.”
Yet some liberal thinkers have postulated that the law would actually be a boon for them, an opportunity for secularists to pool their power and elect like-minded representatives. Karl Sharro believes that the law would in fact have some unintended consequences for the sectarian leaders, and could in the end lead to the demise of the sectarian za’im system.
Right now the law is locked in parliamentary gridlocked, as at least for the moment looks unlikely to be adopted in time for the election.
All of that nice stuff aside, Lebanon has some problems. For a country that prides itself on being the middle man of the Middle East, Lebanon has some pretty developing world problems. Over four years ago, in my first op-ed for Ya Libnan, I spoke about Lebanon’s massive energy problems. Obsolete power stations, run-down power lines and other equipment have cost Lebanon dearly in terms of economic productivity. So I wasn’t surprised when Energy Minister Jebran Bassil made the grand promise to provide the people of Lebanon 24 hours of energy, 7 days a week. By 2015. I’m not going to bother you with the specifics of how he plans on doing that, because I think it’s about as likely as Saudi Arabia giving women the right to vote. Or anyone the right to vote for that matter.
Then there’s Syria. Lebanon already has enough refugees calling it home, whether the 400,000 Palestinians, or over 50,000 Iraqis and Sudanese. Although President Suleiman has said that there are over one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, the official UN estimate is 225,709, with another 131,625 waiting to be registered, bringing the total to 357,334. Lebanon is a very small country, and considering it can’t provide electricity for an entire day to all of its citizens, what makes people think it can handle this influx of people in need? Chalk it up as another reason we should be refocusing our humanitarian efforts on refugees instead of wondering if we should be sending the Syrian rebels anti-tank weapons.
Speaking of the Syrian rebels, more than refugees are threatening to spill over the border into Lebanon. On Thursday, March 14th the Syrian Foreign Ministry told its Lebanese counterpart that its “patience is not unlimited,” and warned that it would strike at suspected rebel targets in Lebanon if the Lebanese Army did not do more to stem the flow of men and materiel into Syria. It’s also widely believed that Hezbollah has combat units inside of Syria fighting the rebels, and Israeli intelligence states that Iran and Hezbollah have built a 50,000-strong militia to help prop up the Assad regime. Meanwhile inside of Lebanon pro-Assad and anti-Assad passions have turned into violence on multiple occasions, especially in the city of Tripoli in the north of the country.
This is what Lebanon is facing going towards the elections, scheduled for June 9th. What we have is a barely functioning state with increasingly hostile segments of the population, tensions inflamed by regional powers (U.S., Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Israel, France), and a major armed force (Hezbollah) threatens the government if it smiles in the direction of Israel or frowns when talking about Bashar Assad.
Politics in Lebanon is like a hydra that only fights itself. The heads fight and bite each other, winning temporary victories only to see the others rise again. They can never hope to finish each other off, nor do they really want to. They need each other to survive and thrive. Dominance is relatively short lived, because the neck can grow longer and the teeth can grow stronger, but eventually the other heads of the hydra will fight together to even the odds.
The people of Lebanon pine for days like those of the golden years of the 1960’s, when the Cedars of Lebanon were something to behold. When Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East, the mountains like a transplanted Alps. There’s still the opportunity to ski and go the beach in the space of a couple hours. You can still bask under the moonlight in the ruins of Baalbek. The women are just as beautiful, the food just as good as ever. Lebanon as a country though is like a ship battered by storms and lost at sea, its captain swept overboard. Its crew bickers not over what repairs to make but who to blame for the damage done. Everybody wants the respect a captain gets but none of the responsibility. They don’t as much want to lead as much as they don’t want to follow. That’s their farce; they’d rather be known for nothing than not known at all. Lebanon is the home of the first great adventurers, the Phoenician mariners. It was Shi’a from Lebanon whom Shah Ismail I called on to help him convert Iran to Shi’a Islam. Lebanese middle men who helped move oil from the Arabian sands to Fords in Illinois and Volkswagens in Frankfurt. For the Lebanese, until they get over their own sectarian vanities the dream of Libani auream, Lebanon the Golden, will remain just that: a dream. A precious heirloom being passed on to undeserving heirs.
Election time is coming.
