Lebanese Voters Want Change. Few Expect It.

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By Ben Hubbard and Hwaida Saad - new-york times -  BAALBEK, Lebanon — Yahya Chamas says he is running in Lebanon’s parliamentary election on Sunday because decades of government neglect and corruption have left his district in the hills of northeastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley with shaky infrastructure and its people in poverty. “People are fed up,” Mr. Chamas, a businessman and former member of Parliament, said in an interview at his home. “We hope we can change all these behaviors that don’t lead to development into behaviors 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. When Hezbollah holds rallies in his district, thousands of loyalists show up. Voters across Lebanon will vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday for the first time in nine years, and many of them are indeed fed up.

The country’s crises are many: a 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. But despite the country’s pride in being a rare Arab democracy, few expect the long-awaited elections to do much to solve its pressing problems. “Is this going to bring a new government that is able to change things?” said Sami Atallah, the director of the Lebanese Center 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 parties are based on sect and 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 has been no parliamentary election since 2009 because Parliament decided not to have one. A departing Parliament was supposed to finish its four-year term in 2013, but decided that conditions were not right for elections to be held, so it effectively re-elected itself — twice. “People are fed up,” says Yahya Chamas, a businessman who is running in Lebanon’s parliamentary election on Sunday.CreditDiego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times 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 politicized judiciary and a news media that is either heavily partisan or for sale to the highest bidder. “All these institutions that could play a role in the political system have been co-opted or destroyed, so you end up with confessional representation and no one being held accountable,” Mr. Atallah said. A recent study of the departing Parliament found it to be out of step with citizens’ greatest concerns. Of the 352 laws passed between June 2009 and April 2017, for example, only 31 — 9 percent — related to health, education, water and electricity. The vote on Sunday 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 say will diminish the focus on sect and allow a wider range of candidates to run. But it is so complicated most voters do not understand it and no one can fully predict what effect it will have.

In one notable change, dozens of women are running. In 2009, only 12 women ran, winning only four seats. Also new is a coalition of civil society candidates focused on improving services. “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, the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, who is in Lebanon with a team of observers. 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 he 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 favor,” he said. The system still favors big parties and the wealthy. To buy airtime on television stations, candidates pay tens of thousands of dollars per hour. Pierre El Daher, the 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. Some voters will follow the “devil-you-know” philosophy, worrying that newcomers could bring unforeseen havoc. A poster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, in Baalbek, Lebanon. Hezbollah has provided crucial support for Mr. Assad’s government.CreditDiego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times “We all hope for change, but we don’t expect it,” said Suha Ghader, a teacher. “In fact, God willing, the same people will get elected because I’m scared of the alternative.”

That hampers independent candidates like Mr. Chamas, who served in Parliament years ago but was expelled in 1994 because of allegations of drug smuggling, which he denies. (He says the accusation was cooked up by a powerful Syrian politician who was out to get him.) In the interview, he said he had bought billboards, spent $15,000 for an hourlong appearance on one television station and agreed to pay $25,000 for an hour on another. But when he turned down a morning show, he was offered evening slots that cost twice as much. An hourlong, prime time interview with a popular anchor cost $80,000, he said, more than he could afford. During the interview, his phone rang. It was a voter asking Mr. Chamas how much he would pay for a vote. Mr. Chamas said he did not buy votes, thanked the caller and hung up. It was unclear whether the caller was seeking the highest bidder for his ballot, a common practice in Lebanon, or secretly recording Mr. Chamas’s answer to use in an attack post on social media. Mr. Chamas blasted the political class that has long led the country as self-serving and corrupt. “They have been ruling for 30 years, with corruption and without providing services,” he said. “There is no electricity, no roads, no economy. So who is responsible?” That view is a popular one, so the big parties have adopted a similar message. “The biggest problem in the country is corruption,” said Ali Moqdad, an incumbent from Hezbollah who is also running in Mr. Chamas’s district. When asked what he had done against corruption since entering Parliament in 2005, Mr. Moqdad responded, “Nothing.” He blamed Lebanon’s sectarian politics for making such change difficult.

But his party’s power to mobilize was clear an hour later during a large election rally nearby, where Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s leader, implored the crowd via video link to vote. Thousands of people came, despite a violent hailstorm that had left the ground muddy. Mr. Moqdad said that 640 Hezbollah members from the area had been killed fighting in Lebanon and Syria in recent years. The party pays monthly stipends to their families, making it unlikely they would vote for anyone else. After the rally, two women posed for pictures with their young daughters, who both wore white wedding dresses and held framed photos of their fathers, fighters who had been killed in Syria. “Those who are seeing the martyrs’ photos on the walls of Baalbek, those who sacrificed their lives, should be ashamed of not voting for the Hezbollah list,” said one of the women, Zeinab al-Bazal. Nada Homsi contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

Lebanese Voters Want Change. Few Expect It.

Details

By Ben Hubbard and Hwaida Saad - new-york times -  BAALBEK, Lebanon — Yahya Chamas says he is running in Lebanon’s parliamentary election on Sunday because decades of government neglect and corruption have left his district in the hills of northeastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley with shaky infrastructure and its people in poverty. “People are fed up,” Mr. Chamas, a businessman and former member of Parliament, said in an interview at his home. “We hope we can change all these behaviors that don’t lead to development into behaviors 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. When Hezbollah holds rallies in his district, thousands of loyalists show up. Voters across Lebanon will vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday for the first time in nine years, and many of them are indeed fed up.

The country’s crises are many: a 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. But despite the country’s pride in being a rare Arab democracy, few expect the long-awaited elections to do much to solve its pressing problems. “Is this going to bring a new government that is able to change things?” said Sami Atallah, the director of the Lebanese Center 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 parties are based on sect and 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 has been no parliamentary election since 2009 because Parliament decided not to have one. A departing Parliament was supposed to finish its four-year term in 2013, but decided that conditions were not right for elections to be held, so it effectively re-elected itself — twice. “People are fed up,” says Yahya Chamas, a businessman who is running in Lebanon’s parliamentary election on Sunday.CreditDiego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times 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 politicized judiciary and a news media that is either heavily partisan or for sale to the highest bidder. “All these institutions that could play a role in the political system have been co-opted or destroyed, so you end up with confessional representation and no one being held accountable,” Mr. Atallah said. A recent study of the departing Parliament found it to be out of step with citizens’ greatest concerns. Of the 352 laws passed between June 2009 and April 2017, for example, only 31 — 9 percent — related to health, education, water and electricity. The vote on Sunday 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 say will diminish the focus on sect and allow a wider range of candidates to run. But it is so complicated most voters do not understand it and no one can fully predict what effect it will have.

In one notable change, dozens of women are running. In 2009, only 12 women ran, winning only four seats. Also new is a coalition of civil society candidates focused on improving services. “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, the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, who is in Lebanon with a team of observers. 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 he 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 favor,” he said. The system still favors big parties and the wealthy. To buy airtime on television stations, candidates pay tens of thousands of dollars per hour. Pierre El Daher, the 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. Some voters will follow the “devil-you-know” philosophy, worrying that newcomers could bring unforeseen havoc. A poster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, in Baalbek, Lebanon. Hezbollah has provided crucial support for Mr. Assad’s government.CreditDiego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times “We all hope for change, but we don’t expect it,” said Suha Ghader, a teacher. “In fact, God willing, the same people will get elected because I’m scared of the alternative.”

That hampers independent candidates like Mr. Chamas, who served in Parliament years ago but was expelled in 1994 because of allegations of drug smuggling, which he denies. (He says the accusation was cooked up by a powerful Syrian politician who was out to get him.) In the interview, he said he had bought billboards, spent $15,000 for an hourlong appearance on one television station and agreed to pay $25,000 for an hour on another. But when he turned down a morning show, he was offered evening slots that cost twice as much. An hourlong, prime time interview with a popular anchor cost $80,000, he said, more than he could afford. During the interview, his phone rang. It was a voter asking Mr. Chamas how much he would pay for a vote. Mr. Chamas said he did not buy votes, thanked the caller and hung up. It was unclear whether the caller was seeking the highest bidder for his ballot, a common practice in Lebanon, or secretly recording Mr. Chamas’s answer to use in an attack post on social media. Mr. Chamas blasted the political class that has long led the country as self-serving and corrupt. “They have been ruling for 30 years, with corruption and without providing services,” he said. “There is no electricity, no roads, no economy. So who is responsible?” That view is a popular one, so the big parties have adopted a similar message. “The biggest problem in the country is corruption,” said Ali Moqdad, an incumbent from Hezbollah who is also running in Mr. Chamas’s district. When asked what he had done against corruption since entering Parliament in 2005, Mr. Moqdad responded, “Nothing.” He blamed Lebanon’s sectarian politics for making such change difficult.

But his party’s power to mobilize was clear an hour later during a large election rally nearby, where Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s leader, implored the crowd via video link to vote. Thousands of people came, despite a violent hailstorm that had left the ground muddy. Mr. Moqdad said that 640 Hezbollah members from the area had been killed fighting in Lebanon and Syria in recent years. The party pays monthly stipends to their families, making it unlikely they would vote for anyone else. After the rally, two women posed for pictures with their young daughters, who both wore white wedding dresses and held framed photos of their fathers, fighters who had been killed in Syria. “Those who are seeing the martyrs’ photos on the walls of Baalbek, those who sacrificed their lives, should be ashamed of not voting for the Hezbollah list,” said one of the women, Zeinab al-Bazal. Nada Homsi contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

What to expect in the Lebanese election and why it matters

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This article does not necessarily represents khazen.org 

by ERIC REGULY -- theglobeandmail.com Lebanon goes to the polls for the first time in nine years on May 6, and the election has put the entire region on tenterhooks. Will the outcome change the geopolitical calculus between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two archrivals who are trying to turn Lebanon into a proxy state? The small Mediterranean country, with a population of six million, including nearly two million Syrian and Palestinian refugees, has been in the middle of a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for many years, testing its avowed neutrality. Lebanon’s Iran-financed Hezbollah fighters are on eternal war alert with Israel. Europe and the United States are keen to keep Lebanon intact. It is the only Arab democracy in the Middle East. The success of the election – and the formation of a durable, inclusive government – is not just crucial for the stability of ever-fragile Lebanon, it is essential for the stability of the Middle East. 

Only a few months ago, there was a good chance the election would face yet another delay. How did it get back on track?

Saad Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister, came back – that’s how. You might remember that he mysteriously vanished from Beirut on Nov. 3, only to surface the next day in Riyadh, where he announced his shock resignation on Saudi Arabian TV (born in Saudi Arabia, he has Saudi, Lebanese and French citizenship). Suddenly, Lebanon was without its leader and the country was thrust into another potentially violent crisis. But most of the 20 or so elected parties in Lebanon – Sunni, Shia, Islamist, Christian, Druze, secular, among others – rallied behind Mr. Hariri. They assumed he had been detained by the Saudis because of his accommodating political position with Hezbollah. France, Lebanon’s colonial master until 1943, helped to extract Mr. Hariri from Saudi Arabia and sent him on his way to Beirut, where he received a hero’s homecoming welcome and rescinded his resignation. With the crisis over, it was game on for the election.

Why does this election matter?

The fact that it is happening at all is a something of a miracle both in Lebanon and in the wider Middle East. The last Lebanese parliamentary election was in 2009, even though one is supposed to be held every four years. But each effort to rev up the vote machine has failed, with one crisis after another, notably the Syrian civil war and the inability to elect a new president taking the blame. Internationally, the Lebanese election delivers the message that its democracy project is intact – a rarity in the Arab world – even if the Lebanese version is tainted by corruption and nepotism, with the sons of elected bosses often automatically propelled into Parliament. (Tunisia emerged as a democracy after the Arab Spring uprisings, but is not technically part of the Middle East.) “If you look around the Middle East, democratic elections don’t happen often,” says Riad Tabbarah, a former Lebanese ambassador to the United States.

Other than the fact it is happening, what is special about this election?

It introduces a new electoral law that is based on proportional representation rather than plurality (two votes are cast, one for a list of candidates in a particular local alliance, one for an individual candidate on that list). The upshot is that, for the first time, a record number of new candidates – many of them women or members of civil-society groups – will have a fair chance of cracking the corrupt old political power bases and squeezing into the 128-seat Parliament. Of the final list of the 113 people who registered as candidates, 84 women made the cut. Most independents aren’t interested in the traditional geopolitical affinities that can, say, define a party as pro-Iranian (Shia) or pro-Saudi (Sunni); instead, they are concerned with the quality, or lack thereof, of everyday life – job creation, waste collection, education, health, environment. “The good thing about this election is that it can bring new ideas to parliament,” says Fouad Rahme, a Beirut banker who is president of the Lebanese Businessmen’s Association and the leader of a new civil society party called Sabaa (he is not running for Parliament himself). “Civil-society candidates could get five to 10 seats in Parliament, which would be a breakthrough.”

Who will win the election?

Political analysts say the new electoral law makes it hard to predict which parties will gain or lose seats – the poll will take voters into uncharted territory. What is known is that no one will “win” the election, because elections are not really won in Lebanon. The political manoeuvring in Lebanon’s endlessly varied and complicated political landscape – the constitution recognizes 18 religious sects – is aimed at establishing an equilibrium designed to avoid a civil war such as the one that smashed the country to bits from 1975 to 1990 (the constitution dictates that the president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of Parliament a Shia Muslim) The March 14 Alliance, led by Mr. Hariri’s Sunni, pro-West, Saudi-oriented Future Movement, is expected to lose seats to the conservative Shia Amal Movement and the Hezbollah-dominated March 8 Alliance. That group, formed in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, then a stronghold for Palestinian guerrillas, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Canada. The Saudis are backing Mr. Hariri to help ensure the Future Movement’s power base does not erode significantly. “Saudi Arabia has plenty of interests in Lebanon, strategic and economic, and there are close to half a million Lebanese workers in Saudi Arabia,” says Imad Salamey, a political-science professor at the Lebanese American University. “What is critical for the Saudis is Lebanese neutrality in Syria,” Prof. Salamey says, which is a difficult goal given Hezbollah’s strong support of Syrian government forces

But what might happen if Hezbollah and the other pro-Iranian Shia parties do gain a lot of power in the election?

That scenario is possible, even if unlikely, and would greatly agitate the Saudis and the Israelis. Their fear, and the fear of the United States, is seeing Lebanon swept into the arc of Iranian-Syrian influence. Were that to happen, Saudi Arabia could retaliate by launching an economic boycott against Lebanon, as it did against Qatar, but a war seems unlikely with either Saudi Arabia or Israel. After seven years of bloodshed in Syria, a war in Yemen and the post-Arab Spring wreckage in Libya, no one wants to see another destroyed state in the Middle East, all the more so since any war might not be winnable. Hezbollah’s fighters in Lebanon are well armed and trained and prevented Israel from securing an outright victory in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Will Saad Hariri be the next prime minister?

Almost certainly, yes. Mr. Tabbarah, the former Lebanese diplomat, thinks a backroom deal among Parliament’s power brokers to reinstall him has already been made. Mr. Hariri is considered a safe choice because he is a consensus builder and, in the interests of unity, will make deals with Hezbollah even though his Future Movement party is supported by the Hezbollah-hating Saudi regime. He also has brand value. He is the son of Rafic Hariri, the popular two-time prime minister of Lebanon who was assassinated in 2005.

Is Lebanon’s ailing economy an election issue?

Yes, but given the economy’s sorry state, it’s strange that it’s not more of an issue. Lebanon’s growth has fallen steadily since the start of the Syrian war and arrival of some 1.2 million Syrian refugees. In the four years before the war, which began in 2011, the economy was on fire, with average growth rates of more than 9 per cent. Its debt-to-gross-domestic-product (GDP) ratio, now at 150 per cent, is among the highest in the world, even higher than that of Greece, and its fat budget deficit, at 10 per cent of GDP, is entirely unsustainable. The only good news is that Lebanon’s central bank and private banking system are strong, preventing the country from going bankrupt. Aware that Lebanon is in dire need of help to prevent an economic crisis that could prove politically and socially disastrous, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Saudi Arabia and other big-name lenders this month pledged US$10.1-billion in low-interest loans and almost US$900-million in grants to Lebanon. The funds will be used mostly to finance infrastructure investments. Still, some economists think Lebanon’s economy could get worse before it gets better. “The country is not on the verge of collapse but none of the parties has a comprehensive and viable long-term economic platform,” says Nassib Ghobril, head of economic research at Lebanon’s Byblos Bank.

A Lebanese city, and an election, feel effect of Saudi cold shoulder

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This is an opinion article, it does not necessarily reflects khazen.org 

Reuters by Tom Perry & Ali Hashisho --SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) - The last time Lebanon held a parliamentary election, Youssef Sanjar enjoyed a paid flight home from Saudi Arabia to vote for Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri’s party. As an employee of the then thriving Saudi Oger construction company owned by the Hariri family, there was no question whom he would support. He helped with campaign logistics and his mother nagged neighbors in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon to make sure they voted. Since then, Saudi Oger has collapsed because of Saudi state spending cuts, waste, mismanagement and corruption, and Sanjar has fallen on hard times. He says he will never vote for a Hariri again. The loss of faith mirrors the break in the once-tight relationship between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, much of it channeled through the Hariri family. With Riyadh focused more on Yemen, where it is involved in a proxy war against Iran, Tehran has cemented its influence over Lebanon through unfettered backing for the heavily armed Shi’ite group Hezbollah. The change is tipping the balance of power in Lebanese politics, and Sanjar and his family reflect that shift. Saudi Oger stopped paying his salary in 2015, he said, and he returned to Sidon the following year. He struggles to get by and he plans — along with several dozen members of his extended family — to show his displeasure by not voting in Sunday’s parliamentary election, the first since 2009. “We felt we were almost like government employees,” Sanjar said. “We didn’t have a plan B.” Saudi Oger could not be reached by email or telephone for comment. Its demise has also left Hariri and his Future Movement in the lurch financially. The fortune generated by the construction giant helped establish the Hariri family as the dominant Sunni force in Lebanese politics, and was a vehicle of Saudi support for late Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005. Though he is likely to remain prime minister, Hariri is expected to lose seats to rivals including some candidates allied to Tehran-backed Hezbollah, another small shift in Saudi Arabia’s regional rivalry with Iran.

BAGS OF MONEY

One of Hariri’s losses could be in Sidon. For decades, Saudi Oger recruited heavily there and the company’s demise has hurt the Mediterranean city. The challenge facing Future in Sidon is compounded by a new voting system that means a Hezbollah ally is well placed to win one of the two Sunni seats held by Future since 2009. “I would not be speaking the truth if I said we were not affected. We have, as a society, been affected,” Nasser Hammoud, the Future coordinator for southern Lebanon, said in Sidon. Hammoud estimates the crisis has had a direct impact on between 3,000 to 3,500 people in Sidon — some 800 Saudi Oger workers and their families — though he still believes they will support Future in the election. Hammoud said Rafik al-Hariri, who was born in Sidon, and his sister Bahiya al-Hariri, a member of parliament in Sidon since 1992, regularly sent unemployed locals to work for Saudi Oger. Rami Qasem Madi, who runs a Sidon building company, said house purchases by Saudi Oger employees once generated over a third of his business. Lebanon’s economy as a whole is ailing but he sees Saudi Oger’s collapse as the main cause of his firm’s problems. Its workforce has halved since 2016. “It was a big shock,” said Madi. “We all thought that the Lebanese who goes to the Gulf collects money in bags.” Hariri-run charities have also been hit in Sidon. Two clinics that provided heavily subsidized health care have closed. Hammoud said one would reopen after the vote. Sanjar left for Saudi Arabia in 2003. His job in logistical support services at Saudi Oger allowed him to put his children in an international school, support his family in Lebanon and buy a house in Sidon. When he stopped being paid, Sanjar found informal work in Saudi Arabia, sold his laptop, moved his children to a cheaper school, then sold his furniture. One of his sisters had to pay his airfare when he eventually flew home. He could not keep up payments on his mortgage and his home in Sidon was repossessed. Sanjar says he is owed between $50,000 and $60,000 in unpaid salary and compensation. His goal is to emigrate to Europe.

A MIRACLE?

Former Saudi Oger employees say they have been referred to the Saudi ministry of labor over compensation. The ministry did not respond to written questions about the status of the compensation. While underlining that Future and Saudi Oger were separate organizations, Hammoud said ex-employees’ rights were protected and there would be “a solution for everyone”. Hariri, who has been prime minister since late 2016, has said he will create jobs and revive the economy through an internationally backed $16-billion capital investment plan. Hammoud said efforts had been made to find jobs for Lebanese who had returned from Saudi Arabia. Some have sought help from Future’s political rivals. “Many came to us,” said Osama Saad, a Sunni who counts himself part of the Iran-led “axis of resistance”. “We did our best and perhaps some got jobs but of course jobs in Lebanon aren’t what they are abroad.” Saad’s family is also prominent in Sidon. His father’s assassination in 1975 helped ignite the 1975-1990 civil war. Saudi ties with Lebanon hit a nadir last November when Hariri was briefly detained during a visit to Riyadh and announced his resignation as prime minister. The crisis was resolved after French intervention. On his return to Beirut, Hariri retracted his resignation. He denies resigning against his will and Saudi Arabia has denied putting him under house arrest. Riyadh has revived a $1-billion credit line to Beirut but there has been no sign of financial support for Hariri. Hariri supporters say this helps Iran. “It’s a law of physics: a void will always be filled by something,” said a senior Future official. The official said that “when we are asked how the Sunnis are doing in Lebanon, I say it’s a miracle they are still on their feet.” Additional reporting by Issam Abdallah and Tom Arnold in Dubai, and by Hassan Hankir; Editing by Timothy Heritage Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Lebanon’s new political movements struggle to gain traction

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by arabnews.com -- Lebanon’s political old guard have been at the government’s helm for decades -– some since the 15-year-long civil war came to an end in 1990. But as the parliamentary elections approach, fresh faces have started to appear from within the independent groups who are challenging the political elite. Groups that have risen to prominence during Lebanon’s 2015 garbage crisis such as You Stink and others including Sabaa and Li Baladi, have joined forces under an umbrella coalition named Kuluna Watani and proved what appear to be worthy contenders to break the political mold the country has grown accustomed to and which many are now disillusioned by. Walid Hallassou, a member of Sabaa’s executive council, said ever since the crisis in 2015 when a breakdown in government services meant garbage piled up in Beirut’s streets, it has become apparent that people are fed up with the way things are being handled. And he said these minority groups have accepted that compromises are necessary if they are to work as one political force. “Many of the civil society components sacrificed a lot to create this coalition, and we are able to show that we have 66 candidates running in nine different districts. This is a very powerful message we are giving to the people,” he added.

A united front?

While the coalition is completely formed of independent groups, other non-affiliated lists have opted not to join the coalition, stating that many candidates within the alliance were previously affiliated with old regime parties. In east Beirut, one group named Kelna Beirut is among eight other lists running, but it has distanced itself from Kuluna Watani. Kelna Beirut's founder and candidate, Ibrahim Mneimneh, said many of the groups running in his district under the guise of independent were not as they seemed. “You will see that many of the figures and candidates on the lists are not really independent. They may be an extension of the current establishment, somehow funded or backed by some of the existing political parties or groups,” he said. His list is not the only one choosing to run separately from the coalition. In the Chouf-Aley region, Madaniya, another group that also disassociated itself from other political movements, also opted out of Kuluna Watani. Madaniya candidate Mark Daou said his list chose a total disengagement from the old regime, deciding not to align with formerly affiliated ministers and members of parliament, choosing a totally fresh-faced list. Although Kelna Beirut, Madaniya and Kuluna Watani have the same core rhetoric they still found reasons not to run as a single coalition that would have arguably had a greater chance of dealing a more significant blow to the establishment. As a result, there is a good chance that none of them will win any seats in parliament. “Sectarian political parties are stronger and more tight-knit. They are the ones who laid the rules of the game while civil society groups didn’t know how to pull themselves together and unify,” political analyst Amine Ammouriyye told Arab News. “Maybe, and only maybe, they might have a very poor chance in east Beirut. If they are lucky they might win one seat,” he said.

Electoral law hopes

Lebanon’s new electoral system merges proportional representation with quotas for each religious group to maintain the country’s sectarian balance among the 128 seats in parliament. Under this arrangement, the majority system has been replaced and the threshold needed to win an election lowered — a plan that should benefit independents and reformers, easing the grip on the power of the country’s main clans.

Voters will cast ballots both for their favored list of candidates and a preferred candidate on that list. But Ammouriyye believes the new law will make little difference on the election results, saying the usual suspects will continue to reign, at least for now. “The new voting system, even if it’s modern, is not practical to be applied on small communities. You can’t do percentage on small communities, because this won’t allow traditional lists to be split,” Ammouriyye said. “They also introduced the preferential vote which will only allow the religious sectarian candidates to win and the ones with money who can buy votes. Because it’s a small community they can better control the buying of votes and also the sectarian brainwashing of the voters more.” New laws aside, such groups rely mostly on registered voters actually going to the booths and casting their ballots. During the 2016 municipal elections, independent group Beirut Madinati lost to Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri’s Future Movement. Although it amassed 40 percent of the votes, only 20 percent of the registered electorate voted. “Historically in Lebanon, voter turnout is not very high except in certain places where people are enforced to go …but what we are seeing is that people are excited, they are hopeful, they have seen something that resembles them,” Hallassou said. And with the last parliamentary elections a mere distant memory from nine years ago, most of the voters targeted by these political groups are first-time voters keen to pump new blood into the system.

Lebanon foils attempt to smuggle drugs at airport

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BEIRUT, May 1 (Xinhua) -- The Lebanese Customs police on Tuesday seized 6 kg of drugs hidden inside shoe soles of a smuggler at the Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, the National News Agency (NNA) reported. The police was tipped off about the drug smuggling attempt before the seizure, the NNA said. The suspect, a Lebanese citizen identified by his initials as Aa.A, arrived in Lebanon from South America at dawn on Tuesday. He was arrested and transferred to the Anti-Narcotics Bureau.