Half a Cheer for Democracy in Lebanon

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/opinion/international-world/election-democracy-lebanon.html

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Perhaps the most encouraging thing about the parliamentary elections on Sunday in Lebanon is that they were held at all after years of delay and political inertia, corruption, economic stagnation and foreign meddling.

Lebanon suffers from multiple crises that lead to a perpetual state of paralysis: more than one million Syrian refugees are straining social services; public debt stands at $79 billion, or 150 percent of gross domestic product; the government fails to provide basic services like electricity and garbage collection; and there are fears of a new war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shiite party and dominant military force in Lebanon.

During the electoral campaign, few candidates or parties offered solutions to these systemic problems. Instead, most of the electioneering focused on mobilizing sectarian sentiments among Lebanon’s 4.5 million people.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni who is an ally of Saudi Arabia and the United States, called on supporters to vote for “Lebanon’s stability, economy, sovereignty and Arab identity.” That was a reminder of Hezbollah’s alliance with Iran, which Mr. Hariri and other Sunni leaders have argued threatens Lebanon’s Arab identity and its relationship with Sunni Arab states.

Hezbollah and its allies also deployed a sectarian narrative, which labeled Shiite opponents as agents of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. One Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper published a list of Shiite opposition candidates it claimed, based on leaked diplomatic cables, were being funded by the Emirates.

Even with these sectarian appeals, a majority of voters stayed home. The turnout was 49 percent, dashing hopes that the Lebanese would embrace their first national vote in nine years. The election was originally scheduled for 2013, but the Lebanese Parliament extended its own term and postponed the balloting several times using the ruse that security concerns made it difficult to hold elections.

A new law laid out a parliamentary map on Sunday that was different from that of past elections, dividing the country into 15 districts and 27 sub-districts, and establishing a complex new system of proportional representation that allowed voters to choose both a slate of candidates in larger districts and a preferred candidate running in their sub-districts. The new law, which replaced a winner-take-all system, was pitched by some Lebanese leaders as a way to enable independent and civil society groups to compete against established, largely sectarian-based parties and political bosses.

It did not work out that way. The election strengthened Hezbollah, which along with its allies won a slight majority of seats in the 128-member Parliament. Hezbollah itself did not gain more than the 13 seats it won during the last election in 2009, but its allies performed better. Yet political alliances shift frequently in Lebanon, and Hezbollah may not be able to keep all of its allies, especially the Free Patriotic Movement led by President Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian.

The election did weaken Mr. Hariri, whose party, the Future Movement, lost more than a third of its parliamentary bloc, dropping to 21 seats from the 33 seats it won during the last election.

Mr. Hariri is still positioned to return as prime minister and form a cabinet, but regional forces will shape the political jockeying that follows the election. Lebanon’s sectarian political structure leads to a weak state, and it is often exploited by outside powers, including Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Most Lebanese leaders — who have built substantial networks of patronage through decades of war and corruption — are too invested in the system to change it. And the outsiders are resistant to reforms that could reduce their influence.

Hezbollah’s own patron, Iran, may apply pressure to delay the formation of a new government — and Mr. Hariri’s return as prime minister — after President Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hariri’s Saudi backers, especially the assertive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, might be emboldened by Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement to once again challenge Hezbollah and Iranian influence in Lebanon.

Mr. Hariri’s poor showing was partly a rebuke by Sunni voters unhappy with the concessions that he had to make to Hezbollah and its allies when he became prime minister in 2016. Turnout in Beirut, where Mr. Hariri and his allies dominated previous elections, was lower than in other regions, ranging from 32 percent to 42 percent.

Mr. Hariri has also been weakened because his family’s construction firm collapsed last year after the Saudi government cut spending on building projects. The company employed thousands of Lebanese workers and helped Mr. Hariri continue a political dynasty founded by his father, Rafik Hariri, a billionaire tycoon and former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated in 2005. A United Nations tribunal indicted several Hezbollah members in the elder Hariri’s killing.

Since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Lebanon has been one of the most bitterly contested playing fields in the regional proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Lebanon’s consociational political structure — which seeks to balance the competing interests of 18 religious sects — makes it uniquely vulnerable to exploitation by outsiders.

Under the country’s unwritten National Pact, adopted when Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni, and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite.

Seats in Parliament are divided equally among Muslims and Christians, then further subdivided among different sects. This arrangement has kept any one sect from assuming hegemony; but it also ensures, by pitting each sect against the others in a zero-sum race for political spoils, that they will continue trying.

The division of power was based on a 1932 census, which showed Maronites as the majority in Lebanon. Since then, the government has refused to conduct a new census, fearing that it would upset the confessional equilibrium. By the 1960s, when Muslims began to outnumber Christians, Muslims demanded a new balance of power.

When civil war broke out in 1975, the political imbalance prompted each of the major sects to form its own militias. As the war waned in 1989, Lebanon’s political class negotiated the Taif Accord, a new power-sharing agreement that weakened the Maronite president and granted more authority to the Sunni prime minister and his cabinet. But the sectarian patronage network was left largely intact.

The silver lining in the low turnout in the latest elections might be that the majority of Lebanese are disillusioned by a political system built on patronage and sectarian gerrymandering.

By staying away from the polling booths, Lebanon’s silent majority sent a clear message to the political class: a cosmetic change in election law is not enough. Lebanon needs a new, more democratic means of sharing power — one that is not as easily manipulated by sectarian leaders and foreign powers.