Lebanon heads to polls tomorrow
LEBANESE POWER BROKERS WILL FIND A WAY TO RETAIN CONTROL DESPITE A NEW ELECTORAL LAW VOWING CHANGE
A new electoral law has promised change, but power brokers are unlikely to let it happen |
Yahya Chamas says he is running in Lebanon’s parliamentary election tomorrow because decades of government neglect have left his district in the northeastern Bekaa Valley in poverty.
“People are fed up,” Chamas, a former member of parliament, said.
“We hope we can change all these behaviours that don’t lead to development into behaviours that lead to development.”
It’s a popular sentiment, but his chances are slim.
While he has struggled to afford billboards and television spots, his main competitors are from established parties including Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful militant group and political party, which owns its own television station.
Voters across Lebanon will vote in parliamentary elections tomorrow for the first time in nine years, and many of them are indeed fed up.
The country’s crises are many: One million Syrian refugees are straining public services; a shaky economy is increasingly teetering; garbage is piling up; fear is spreading of a new war between Hezbollah and Israel; and the political class has failed to find solutions.
Change things
“Is this going to bring a new government that is able to change things?” said Sami Atallah, director of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies.
“No, because we have a system that has successfully undermined all accountability mechanisms. As long as these are not in place, I can’t see how these politicians will be able to deliver to the people.”
Lebanon’s political system is an unwieldy compromise based on sect-based power sharing.
Half the seats in parliament are assigned to Christians and half to Muslims. Most of their supporters look to them for protection and patronage more than for sound policies.
Some are still led by warlords from the country’s 15-year civil war, or their offspring.
Since 2009, the government has collapsed twice and the country went without a president for more than two years because the factions could not agree on one. There also has been no parliamentary election since 2009.
Since the civil war ended in 1990, parts of the country have been occupied at times by Syria and Israel, keeping the central state weak and allowing powerful figures to divvy up the economy.
That dysfunction has spilled into the political system, creating a parliament that cannot hold the government accountable, a politicised judiciary and a news media that is either heavily partisan or for sale to the highest bidder.
“All these institutions have been co-opted or destroyed, so you end up with confessional representation and no one being held accountable,” Atallah said.
A recent study of the outgoing parliament found it to be out of step with citizens’ greatest concerns.
Out of the 352 laws passed between June 2009 and April 2017, for example, only 31 — 9 per cent — related to health, education, water and electricity.
The vote tomorrow will include more than 500 candidates competing in 15 districts for 128 seats. The vote will be the first under a new electoral law that supporters hope will diminish the focus on sect and allow a wider range of candidates to run.
“You have new voters, you have new candidates and you have a significantly improved system that we think will bring some new blood into the system,” said Les Campbell, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute.
Since the last election nine years ago, 700,000 young people have become eligible to vote and may make their decisions differently than their parents, he said. But Campbell was cautious about how much change to expect.
“I would never underestimate the ability of Lebanon’s power brokers to find a way to get the new law to work in their favour,” he said.
The system still favours big parties and the wealthy. To buy airtime on television stations, candidates pay tens of thousands of dollars per hour.
Pierre El Daher, chief executive of LBCI, one of the country’s most watched stations, said two candidates had spent more than $700,000 with his station during the campaign. Most spent less than $100,000.
“We all hope for change, but we don’t expect it,” said Suha Ghader, a teacher.