Elite consolidate Power in Lebanon elections

[Moses]

Lebanon's forgotten crowds won't stay silent if their leaders fail to deliver

Monday, May 23, 2005

Editorial


Due to their overzealousness, it seems that the leaders of the Lebanese opposition have run so swiftly that they have outpaced the people who once thought this elite group represented them. With a so-called "elections race" in full swing, the "people power" exhibited at the massive rally on March 14 in Downtown Beirut has been reduced to a trite statement to be repeated mechanically by aspiring parliamentarians.

We need to remind ourselves that March 14 was not only the occasion on which the Lebanese people commemorated the one-month anniversary of the brutal killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The people's decision to take to the streets had more to do with their desire to march forth into a better future than to show their allegiance to their fallen premier. They, the Lebanese people, like runners in a relay race, took the flame from their slain leader's hand, and in marching on the streets of Beirut, displayed clear demands. They had grown tired of the suffocating status quo and were demanding a new and promising future.

Many Lebanese brought their children with them to the demonstration, despite the risks and threats that the protest could turn violent. In doing so, they were not only rejecting the notion of a return to civil war, but they were demanding safety and security for themselves and for their children. The Lebanese were boldly proclaiming that they had had enough of the kind of corruption and oppression that had created the political climate of fear and brutality in which Hariri was assassinated.

In their multitudes, the Lebanese were also embodying the rule of law and respect for their fellow citizens, for each individual and group in this massive rally treated others with the kind of respect they would like bestowed on themselves.

On March 14, over one million Lebanese citizens also demanded a complete Syrian withdrawal, but all of those demonstrators know that it was America and France who were able to roll back the Syrians. Their politicians, with the exception of Hariri who ultimately sacrificed his blood, had done nothing to correct an intolerable situation.

But what now? Has Lebanon's political class outrun those whom it wants to serve and now become self-serving?

By all indications the political scene is long on parliamentary seat-trading and short on political programs that demonstrate a real commitment to reform. Why are some politicians now being chosen in closed-door meetings to serve in Parliament? Is it because they are the most qualified candidates? Is it because it is the democratic desire of the people to have them serve? Unfortunately, the answer is no. But the people of March 14 are not fooled: they know that these decisions are straightforward horsetrading.

Like life, democracy is rarely euphoria. The intensity of March 14 will not be the pattern of the conduct of life or democracy. But as in life there are landmarks, and March 14 will continue to represent a turning point in the Lebanese political scene. The Lebanese have publicly stated that they will no longer watch passively as their leaders hijack their national agenda.

After the elections, the new Parliament will have to face these same crowds, and they may not be as jubilant. They will be waiting and watching for genuine progress and reform. And if the newly elected leadership fails to deliver on their expectations, they will be ready to make themselves heard again.

[Moses]

Posted on Tue, May. 24, 2005

Lebanon's skewed voting system
UNBALANCED LAW LEAVES SHIITES OUT -- AND READY TO SUPPORT HEZBOLLAH
By Annia Ciezadlo[/size][/b]

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Every week, my husband and I take a rickety old taxi to Hezbollah country. The emerald city of downtown Beirut, with its glittering luxury towers, drops away behind us; ruined buildings, their shellshocked hulks festooned with laundry, loom ahead like ghost ships.

Leaving Beirut proper, we reach the dahiya -- the dense and sprawling Shiite crescent, half suburb, half slum, that cradles the city's southern borders. In the dahiya, home to my in-laws and a large swath of Beirut's population, the recent anti-Syrian protests seem like a fairy tale.

``As an area, as dahiya, we're not concerned about what's happening in downtown,'' one college student told me in March while demonstrations raged in Martyrs' Square. ``We regard what's happening as a joke.''

Around the world, however, the candy-cane banners and multilingual college kids of the uprising caught the imagination of millions. Holding parliamentary elections on time, free of Syrian influence, became democracy's new rallying cry. President Bush cautioned against delaying the poll, scheduled to run on four consecutive Sundays beginning Sunday.

But Bush and other well-meaning Americans are ignoring a fundamental problem: With Syria gone, Lebanon's elections will be free, but they won't be fair. In Lebanon, Muslim votes, especially Shiite votes, count less than those of Christians. Literally.

This inequality dates to 1943, when the French handed Lebanon over to the country's French-speaking Maronite Christian elite and founded what is called the confessional system, with parliamentary and executive offices parceled out among the major religious sects. In theory, it provides a balance of religious power; in practice, it's an entrenched imbalance -- and a writhing rat's nest of corruption, with outside influences like Syria easily playing one sect off another.

Lebanon's election law creates a byzantine web of provinces and districts, exquisitely gerrymandered to give each of 18 sects a certain number of seats in parliament. The number of seats each sect gets bears little relation to its weight in the population. The U.S. State Department estimates Lebanon's population at about 70 percent Muslim and 23 percent Christian. Yet parliament must be split equally between Christians and Muslims.

To maintain this political skew, Lebanese electoral law requires all voters to return to their family's ancestral home towns to cast their ballots, regardless of where they actually live. Thus my husband's parents, who have lived in the dahiya for more than 40 years, must travel two hours, to Bint Jubayl, to vote. Old and frail, they likely won't bother, just to elect somebody who won't even represent them.

I see the results of this disenfranchisement every week. Each summer, when Beirut's seaside breeze turns to a steamy blast, the Electricite du Liban stops bringing electricity to the dahiya. The people turn to ishtiraq, Arabic for ``subscription'': You pay a fee to some neighborhood Croesus who owns a generator. Look up, and you'll see the sky through a snarl of electrical wires that siphon ishtiraq from one concrete-block building to another.

Enter Hezbollah, a political machine for people left out of the political system. The party's special status as an armed faction is the Shiites' de facto consolation prize for being disenfranchised. For Lebanon's underrepresented Shiite plurality, guns are the great equalizers: Arms and money flow through Syria from Iran, which is believed to finance the militant group to the tune of millions of dollars per month. In the dahiya and southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has become a powerful shadow government, building a network of schools, hospitals and charities.

The consensus outside Lebanon is that Hezbollah should disarm, as required by U.N. Resolution 1559, and take its place in Lebanon's evolving democracy. But how? Hezbollah will want something in exchange for surrendering its arms. If the party stops being Iran's gun-for-hire against Israel, it stands to lose not just political power, but millions in subsidy. Hezbollah won't give all that up while Lebanon's political deck is stacked so heavily against Shiites.

The Bush administration seems to be waiting until after the elections to address the Hezbollah issue. But the upcoming elections are a rare opportunity: If Bush wants to help Lebanon disarm Hezbollah peacefully -- and if he wants to deserve his reputation as a liberator of the Arab world's downtrodden Shiites -- he'll encourage Lebanon's Christians to give up their special privileges. And if Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is the pragmatist he's reputed to be, he'll accept ballots and a census in exchange for his rocket launchers.

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ANNIA CIEZADLO, a Beirut-based freelance writer, has reported from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the New Republic and the Christian Science Monitor. She wrote this article for the Washington Post.

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