Old
Wine in Older Skins: Lebanon
Elects Another Parliament
Heiko
Wimmen
June
3, 2009
(Heiko
Wimmen is a PhD candidate at Freie Universität Berlin. He was
a program manager for the Middle East office of the German
Heinrich Böll Foundation, a German organization supporting
civil society and social movements around the world from 2004
to 2009.)
On
June 8, when all votes are cast and counted between the glitzy
urban quarters of Beirut and the dusty hamlets of the Bekaa valley,
the Lebanese elections will have produced one certain winner:
the local advertising industry. Despite a newly imposed cap on
campaign spending, candidates have been falling over each other
to plaster the billboards along the roads and highways of this
miniscule country with their oversized likenesses and airy slogans.
Crowded out by the politicians, some peddlers of more pedestrian
seasonal merchandise have retaliated in kind, with a brand of
cheap fruit juice poking fun at notorious practices of vote rigging
by promising democracy
"extra," thus drawing attention to its product by the
same name, while the only locally produced beer brand declared
itself "victorious for lack of competition" already three
months ago -- true to the form of much of the electoral contest.
Such
sarcasm seems well warranted as the ballot on June 7 will not
only be substandard rather than extra on the procedural level,
but will almost certainly produce old wine in even older skins.
Once again, the Lebanese parliament will be dominated by an unpalatable
mix of militia leaders hanging on from the civil war era, multi-millionaire
entrepreneurs who flourished in the two decades since and some
remnants of the traditional political elite responsible for the
original disaster. Even more ominously, it will once again be
hung between two camps bitterly opposed over differences that
appear impossible to bridge, and which brought the country to
the brink of a new civil war only one year ago. External actors
with agendas of their own and little compassion for the lot of
a small country fuel this conflict, while local actors attempt
to pursue their own interests on the back of such foreign intervention,
and mobilize identity politics and sectarian sentiment for that
purpose.
A
Country Divided
On
one side, the opposition, supported by Syria and Iran, views
struggle against Israel and American designs on the region as
a national and, for some, a religious imperative that cannot
be subject to compromise. The main players in the opposition
include the Shi‘i political parties Hizballah and Amal and the
Free Patriotic Movement of former Army General Michel Aoun, who
has to some extent managed to reconcile the traditional Lebanese
nationalism of his Christian constituency with the much broader,
pan-Islamic vision of his Shi‘i allies. Aoun's movement also
focuses, in a populist vein, on clientelism and corruption in
the government camp (while conveniently ignoring similar practices
of some members of the opposition) and the need for political
reform.[1]
The
Western -- and especially US -- backed government majority with
the Sunni Future Movement as its political backbone and the Druze
community and some Christian groups as allies, strives to prevent
further involvement in regional conflicts, and views the military
structures and arsenal of Hizballah as a liability. Just like
their regional supporters (in particular Saudi Arabia), they
are in favor of forging an alliance of
"moderate" Arab states against alleged Iranian encroachment
on the region and, by extension, renewed Syrian encroachment on
Lebanese sovereignty. Prosperity and development, in their mind,
will be achieved chiefly through an environment favorable for tourism
and foreign investment, and Hizballah's propensity to involve Lebanon
in regional conflict will thereby impede this objective.
In
particular since the July 2006 war, these two camps confront
each other with deep mutual distrust: while the government accuses
Hizballah of sacrificing Lebanon for Syrian and Iranian interests,
Hizballah maintains that the government collaborated with the
enemy during the war and intends to turn Lebanon into an auxiliary
of an Israeli-American political and economic hegemony over the
region. Things came to a head in the spring of 2008, when an
18 month-long constitutional crisis paralyzing much of the political
system culminated in five days of street battles that led to
ignominious defeat for the government camp and its proto-militias[2] by paramilitary units of Hizballah and its auxiliaries.[3] The crisis was defused by an unusually swift
and efficient mediation effort by the Arab League, and a summit
of Lebanese leaders convened in the Qatari capital Doha led to
the formation of a "Government of National Unity," largely
on the terms of the opposition.
The
Sectarian Template
While
ostensibly at odds over issues of existential national importance,
such as how and against whom to defend the country, and how to
build an efficient state, in reality all sides draw upon and
sometimes fan sectarian sentiment and fear for much of their
mobilization.[4]
In
the government camp, fervent hostility to the Syrian regime galvanized
the previously docile Sunni community and united it behind the
heirs of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri after the latter's assassination
in 2005 -- still blamed, despite crumbling evidence, on the Alawi
(and hence vaguely Shi‘i) regime in Damascus. This has been gradually
blended with the community's wariness at the political rise of
Lebanon’s Shi‘i community.[5] Fears of an imminent "Shi‘i hegemony" over Lebanon
greatly increased after the Future Movement proved unable to
defend Beirut -- perceived as a
"Sunni city" by the community -- against the "Shi‘i
takeover" of May 2008. Its Christian allies largely follow
their traditional positions of defending the independence of Lebanon
as the only Middle Eastern country where Christians can wield power,
and favoring strong bonds with the West -- positions shared by
the Future Movement (albeit for motives of which many Christians
remain skeptical). The Druze, for their part, typically follow
the bold tactical maneuvers of their leader Walid Jumblat that
have helped his community to exert political influence far beyond
its demographic weight.
Hizballah,
in contrast, has consistently reached out to Arab-nationalist
tendencies in the Sunni community, in particular by emphasizing
the Palestinian cause, and strives to downplay the sectarian
character of its own political support base. Yet the rhetoric,
rituals and vision of the movement remain steeped in Shi‘i popular
memory of centuries of oppression at the hands of Sunni elites.
While the party has succeeded in transposing such resentment
into a stand against Israel and the US as the oppressors of our
age, slippage is liable to occur once the adversary is seen as
acting in cahoots with these enemies. The self-confidence displayed
by Shi‘i interlocutors in the wake of the events of 2006 and
2008 is somewhat compromised by the perception of being a small
minority surrounded by militantly anti-Shi‘i regimes, in particular
the rulers of Saudi Arabia, and increasingly Egypt, and by the
enormous economic power wielded by some of these actors. Similar
fears of minority marginalization and Sunni extremism, a history
of competition with the Sunnis over power in the state and the
civil war baggage of intra-Christian fratricidal conflict (in
particular with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea) are also
important motivations that brought Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement
into its rather unlikely alliance with the Shi‘i parties.
Projections
of a Photo Finish
Since
both sides to the intra-Muslim conflict command the near total
loyalty of their respective sectarian communities, voting in
predominantly Muslim areas will amount to little more than a
census at the ballot box. The Shi‘i parties Hizballah and Amal
are expected to carry up to 35 seats in the overwhelmingly Shi‘i
regions of South Lebanon and the Northern half of the Bekaa Valley,
while the Future Movement will prevail in the staunchly Sunni
North and among the Sunni population of the coastal cities, likewise
securing around 35 out of a total of 128 seats. The loyalist
camp can also, for now, count on the support of the mercurial
Walid Jumblat, whose overwhelming support in the Druze community
gives him control over about twelve seats, and tipping power
for some additional three or four.
Things
are slightly more complicated in the Christian camp, where social
cleavages and sectarian and regional differences overlap with
bitter memories from the civil war. Upwardly mobile and merit-oriented
middle class Christians tend to buy into the reform rhetoric
of the Aoun movement, while several
"old" and wealthy "political families" on the
government side still command significant support. Many Orthodox
voters tend to favor Aoun (who is Maronite) for his pan-Christian
and Lebanese-nationalist stance over the Maronite-centered perspective
of the traditional Christian leadership. Those who live in areas
which were controlled by the Lebanese Forces during the Civil War
tend to have particularly unfavorable opinions of Samir Geagea.
On balance, and despite the mantra of "Aoun's waning popularity
among the Christians" that has been repeated by his detractors
ever since he allied himself with Hizballah, on June 7 the Free
Patriotic Movement and its assorted allies are likely to harvest
between 25 and 30 seats, while the Christian parties loyal to the
government may garner around ten.
With
both camps securing around sixty "safe" seats, victory
and defeat in these elections hinges on some eight seats (out
of 128) where the race has not been pre-decided by the electoral
partition adopted at the Doha conference,[6] and
where the result actually depends on the parties' ability to
bring out the vote. Most pollsters are expecting a slight advantage
for the opposition, albeit by a very slim margin (three to four
seats). Yet as there are several districts where the race is
simply too close for precise polling a majority for the government
camp is also a possibility, or even a completely hung parliament.
Post-Election
Scenarios
In
the event of an opposition win, Future Movement leader Saad Hariri
has repeatedly rejected calls to join a new "Government
of National Unity,"
which is the declared preference of Hizballah in such a scenario.
Whether or not this position is to be taken at face value or understood
as tactically motivated to rally support for his Christian allies
through creating the doomsday scenario of a Hizballah-dominated
government, Hariri is likely to come under pressure to backpedal
from this position if the opposition wins in order to avoid renewed
polarization. Since the position of the Prime Minister is reserved
for a Sunni, appointing a new head of government without the consensus
of the Future Movement would inevitably lead to widespread alienation
in the Sunni community, accusations of " Shi‘i encroachment"
on a centerpiece of Sunni power, and a further deepening of the
sectarian divide.
Hizballah,
on the other hand, has reportedly been testing the ground for
possible international reception of a government in which it
would take a significant share, apparently with largely positive
results.[7] While an international boycott of Lebanon along
the lines of what happened to the Palestinian government after
Hamas won elections in 2005 can be ruled out, relations with
the US will likely cool off, and development aid drop, as announced
by Vice President Joe Biden in a recent visit to Beirut clearly
intended to shore up the fortunes of the government majority.[8]
If
defeated by a narrow margin, the opposition will nevertheless
insist on retaining the political gains achieved in Doha, and
remain a junior partner with veto power[9] in
the new government. Judging from the outcome of the constitutional
crisis of 2006-08, the majority will have no choice but to yield,
even if it were to defend its share in parliament, leading again
to the formation of a National Unity Government and maintaining
the status quo.
However,
apart from a morale boost for the camp securing a slim majority,
neither scenario will signal a dramatic shift in either internal
or external Lebanese politics, as the consensus principle built
into the Lebanese political system provides a wide array of procedural
vetoes and obstructive options that make it practically impossible
for any parliamentary majority to impose its political preferences
on a determined opposition. Since those mechanisms are especially
designed to prevent the marginalization of any one of the major
sectarian communities, they are even more effective if at least
one of the communities left out of government is united behind
a strong leadership, which is clearly the case in the current
configuration. Barring spectacular post-electoral defections,[10] the
political landscape as of June 8 is thus not likely to change
decisively.
In
the prolonged negotiation and bargaining process that will follow
the elections in any possible scenario, much will also depend
on the regional and international environment, in particular
whether relations between the US and Iran move towards détente
and diplomacy, or towards coercion and conflict. According to
Osama Safa, head of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS), "our
elections really pale in comparison to the Iranian elections,
which are only five days later, and which decide how extremist
Iran will be. This will weigh heavily on the situation here:
if we get a continuation of the Ahmadinejad presidency, then
Iran's local allies will play a much harder ball than before.
If a more moderate figure prevails, then we will also see a more
moderate, centrist negotiation behavior here."
The
Electoral Economy of Clientelism and Dependency
Between
all the battles over existential questions of national identity
and foreign policy, precious little time and attention is left
for questions relating to the actual needs and worries of Lebanese
citizens. Daily power cuts of between three and twelve hours
still keep much of Lebanon dependent on expensive and polluting
diesel generators. In the most water-rich country of the Middle
East, drinking water only reaches most households every other
day, for some six to eight hours, and in some regions only once
a week at the end of summer. Open garbage dumps litter the country
and the coast, and most of the raw sewage produced by four million
Lebanese goes straight into the sea. Unemployment stands anywhere
between 20 or 30 percent, in particular among youth. But the
most crippling shortage for any Lebanese family subsiding on
a normal family income[11] is
the disastrous state of the public education system.
The "Saida
National School" run by the charitable Maarouf Saad Foundation
is tucked away in a historical, painstakingly renovated khan
in the maze of the old city of Saida (Sidon), thirty kilometers
south of Beirut. Some 200 children receive elementary school
education there, mostly hailing from low income families in the
area, who pay a nominal annual fee of some $400 per child per
year, less than half of the actual running expenses. Many families
struggle to raise even this modest amount, and are supported
by stipends raised primarily during Ramadan. The contribution
of the Lebanese state stands at $80 annually per child -- with
payments for four years in arrears.
"We
never intended to take the place of the state," says board
member Mona Saad, a petite, soft spoken woman in her late fifties, "but
it appears that human development is really not a priority in
politics."
Public schools do exist in Saida, as in the rest of the country,
and while status-conscious Beirutis mostly turn their nose up at
the public system, some of them actually do offer a reasonable
standard. The problem is that there are never enough places, at
least at those schools known for quality, or rather, that access
depends on the favors of influential politicians with power of
patronage -- favors that amount to an open bill, to be footed on
election day. In Saida, this state of affairs has been translated
into the local notion that whoever wishes to get into the public
system needs to pay a visit to "The Lady" -- Bahiya Hariri,
sister of the late Prime Minister, MP for Saida since 1996 and
Minister of Education since 2005.
At
the mention of political interference in the provision of public
education, Mona Saad struggles to maintain her composure, and
raises her voice:
"There may even be enough places, but people have completely
internalized this logic, and school directors will simply not give
a place to a child before they get a call from this or that political
leader. These are services paid for with taxpayer money -- they
should be accessible to everybody, but those political leaders
have simply hijacked them."
Alternatively,
low-cost quality education is available from networks of
"charitable" institutions present all over the country,
often with an open or implicit politico-sectarian agenda. Escaping
such dependencies requires, in Saida as anywhere in Lebanon, the
deep pockets necessary to pay for commercial private education,
starting at some $4,000 annually per child -- a tall order even
for many middle class families.
Mona
Saad herself hails from a family with a long political tradition.
She is the daughter of a Sidonian labor organizer turned parliamentarian.
After his assassination on the eve of the civil war his sons
continued the tradition, and have represented Saida as MPs for
the past 17 years. However, this time around, the odds have been
turning against them. With the adoption of small electoral districts
agreed upon in Doha, the electorate of Saida is now nearly 80%
Sunni, prompting the Hariri family to break with the long tradition
of sharing the two seats representing the city, and bringing
them even closer to achieving a total monopoly over political
representation of the Sunni community in Lebanon. To that end,
they fielded none other than Prime Minister Fuad Siniora himself,
whose political future may be up in the air if he loses the tight
race against his still popular Nasserite opponent for the second
slot in the city (first place is expected to go, by a large margin,
to Bahiya Hariri). As of now, opinion polls suggest that the
gamble may pay off, with Saad tailing Siniora by some one thousand
votes. Mona Saad, who has been campaigning house to house for
her brother over the past weeks, remains unflinched: "People
are afraid to tell strangers and pollsters what they think. They
receive monthly payments and food supplies from the Hariris,
their kids are in their schools, many work for one of their companies.
They are afraid to lose their job when it becomes known they
vote for us, and we can't get them a new one."
Much
of this economy of dependency and loyalty relies on antiquated
electoral procedures that allow politicians to undermine the
secrecy of the vote. Lebanese citizens do not vote by ticking
a box on a standardized and official ballot sheet, but by writing
down names of their preferred candidates (as many names as there
are seats in a district). Doreen Khoury, a 30 year old civil
society activist, has spent the last ten years of her life fighting
for a better electoral system -- so far largely in vain. She
has had many opportunities to observe the sophisticated ruses
deployed by Lebanese politicians and their mobilization machines:
"What
happens is that the campaign machines themselves print a list
of candidates that they want you to put in the ballot box, and
distribute it. That sounds harmless, but it’s the key device
to track votes. Most people vote in villages, where you have
rarely more than 2,000 voters, who are further subdivided by
sect and by family register numbers. So if in a given voting
room you have ten major families, they will distribute ten different
versions of the same list to those families -- different in font,
name order, etc. During vote count, the election monitors of
the various candidates inspect any single ballot paper, and they
track exactly how many copies of what version ended up in the
box. And after the elections, they may come to the head of that
family and tell him: hey -- we promised you to pay the tuition
for your nephew, we settled your cousin's hospital bill -- why
didn't you guys vote for us?"
Equally
important, from the perspective of the political elite, is to
assure that voters do not alter the lists they were given, as
the leverage of the individual politician in the horse-trading
that dominates the formation of electoral alliances -- exchanging
support in one district for votes in another -- mostly depends
on his[12] ability
to compel supporters to vote blindly for the line-up presented
to them. Recalls Khoury:
"In
2005, in one voting room they had removed the table, and shortened
the curtain that supposedly protects the secrecy of the vote.
And when voting started I realized why: people who wanted to
change the list, or write their own list, had to lift their knee
so that they could rest the paper on their leg to write. The
monitors would peek under the curtain, and every time somebody
raised a knee, they would mark the name."
Dissipating
Democratic Aspirations
One
of the promises of the new government installed after the 2005
"Cedar Revolution" was to pass a new electoral law that
would curb such clientelist practices, which during the 15-plus
years of Syrian occupation had been used to provide democratic
legitimacy to even the most loathsome quislings of the Pax Syriana.
A draft law was developed and promoted with unprecedented civil
society participation and international support,[13] only to be shelved indefinitely
in the aftermath of the 2006 war and subsequent constitutional
crisis.
Ultimately,
entrenched clientelism, sectarian fear, an unfavorable international
environment and a majoritarian electoral formula, which tends
to privilege traditional politicians, all conspired against the
change that most of those activists who took to the streets in
2005 desired.
Equally
important in perpetuating the status quo is a group of political
actors unprepared to imagine a different order of things. Says
Oussama Safa of LCPS:
"We
keep focusing on the political system, and we tend to forget
that in all successful changes around the globe, from South Africa
to Poland, you always had a visionary, courageous leadership
that emerged and led the nation. In Lebanon, we had none. And
so when we have our short moments of glory, such as those demonstrations
in 2005, when people go into the streets and don't find leadership,
they won't just stay there. They go home."
With
a political system based on consensus, there will be no escape
from the quagmire of the past two years without compromise. Whichever
camp wins the majority on Sunday will be less crucial in determining
Lebanon’s future than the political bargaining that follows.
If the Lebanese government is to work after the elections, the
political elite will have show bold leadership and compromise
where they failed to before.
Endnotes
[1] For
a discussion of the Aoun movement see Heiko Wimmen, “Rallying
around the Renegade”, Middle East Report Online, 27/08/2007; http://www.merip.org/mero/mero082707.html.
[2] The
government side denied the existence of these militias and instead
spoke of “citizens who defended their houses”. See Borzou Daragahi
and Raed Rafei, “Lebanon's Sunni bloc built militia, officials
say”, Los Angeles Times, 05/12/08; http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-security12-2008may12,0,6458359.story.
[3] For
a detailed discussion of the May 2008 events, see Heiko Wimmen, Lebanon
Pulls back from the Abyss, Heinrich Böll Foundation – Middle
East Office, 05/30/2008; http://www.boell-meo.org/download_en/Lebanon_Abyss.pdf.
[4] The
– necessarily generalizing – observations presented in the following
three paragraphs are partly based on a focus group study conducted
with some 150 young Lebanese (age group 18-25) in late 2008 and
early 2009 in cooperation between the Lebanese Center for Policy
Studies (LCPS), the Heinrich Böll Foundation (hbf) and the United
Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA).
The findings match to a large extent with quantitative surveys
conducted in recent years; cf. for example Theodor Hanf, (2007) E
pluribus unum? Lebanese opinions and Attitudes on Coexistence. Byblos:
UNESCO International Centre for Human Sciences, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/beirut/04985.pdf.
[5] A
recent article in the German magazine "Der Spiegel" ostensibly
based on evidence
"leaked" from the international court investigating the
crime suggests a direct involvement of Hizballah, an accusation
that, if proved substantial, would help to complete this maneuver.
However, the veracity of the original information remains unascertained,
and the article displays poor understanding of Lebanese politics
in the analysis of the potential motives for such an involvement,
while the timing of the publication (two weeks before the Lebanese
elections, and during a period when American foreign policy seems
intend on rehabilitating Syria in order to lure it away from its
alliance with Iran) raises suspicion of ulterior motives. See Sami
Moubayed, "Finger-pointing riles Hezbollah", Asia Times
Online, May 27, 2009; http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KE27Ak01.html.
[6] The
law provides for a first-past-the-post majority system differentiated
by sect. As in most majority systems, gerrymandering has the
potential to severely distort the popular vote, and has been
a temptation for sitting presidents and governments ever since
the foundation of Lebanon, as the partition of electoral districts
often settles the race for a large number of seats before campaigning
even begins. During the Doha conference, most of the actual mediation
effort was in fact devoted to discussing the details of the future
electoral law, and in particular the partition of Beirut. The
outcome, with its tendency to slightly favor the opposition,
likewise reflected the balance of power on the ground in the
wake of Hizballah's "occupation" of West Beirut.
[7] Ali
Al-Amine, “Hizbollah prepares for period after June 8”, Al
Balad Newspaper, 03/30/2009; http://www.albaladonline.com/html/story.php?sid=56582 (Arabic).
The recent restoration of official contacts with the party's
political wing by the British government may also be part of
that process.
[8] NPR/AP, "
Biden's Lebanon Trip Sparks Charge of Interference", 05/22/2009; http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104429042.
[9] According
to the constitution, a government is considered resigned when
more than one third of cabinet ministers resign. By obtaining
11 out of 30 ministers in the National Unity Government formed
after the Doha accord, the opposition was thus in the position
to bring down the government at any moment by means of collective
resignation, and could thus veto any legislation it disliked.
[10] Recent
moves by Walid Jumblat have been widely interpreted in this sense.
Likewise, speculations about a "centrist" block loyal
to the President emerging from
"independent" MPs on both sides of the aisle have been
floated. There seems to be little substance to most of these speculations,
many of which are clearly based on narrow electoral calculations,
or plain wishful thinking.
[11] Between
1,500 and 2,500 US-Dollars for a family of two breadwinners in
qualified salaried employment, and around $500 or less for families
depending on a single income from unskilled occupation. Double-income
households typically have to rely on live-in helpers for household
labor and child minding, reducing disposable income by some $300
per month.
[12] Only
very rarely hers – Lebanese women participate in politics almost
exclusively as placeholders for assassinated or otherwise impeded
fathers, brothers and husbands, and often only until a male heir
to the position has reached an appropriate age. However, some
do manage to acquire a political standing of their own, such
as the sister of the late Rafiq Hariri, Bahiya, or the widow
of the assassinated president of the republic René Moawad, Nayla.
[13] According
to observations by activists in these campaigns, which are confirmed
in private by European diplomats, much of the Western support
for the electoral reform was based on the rather doubtful premise
that better electoral standards and hence lesser opportunities
for voter intimidation would weaken support for
"radical" forces such as Hizballah, and support "moderates"
such as the Future movement.
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