It is election season in Lebanon. Millions will head to the ballot box on May
15 to choose their parliamentarians, who will in turn elect a new president
before October. International voting monitors are scheduled to observe election
day and will likely report that the voting went smoothly.
اضافة اعلان
What they will miss, however, is the Hezbollah
coercion that has occurred in the weeks and months leading up to the vote.
Abbas Jawhari, a Shiite cleric from the country’s
Baalbek district, is running on a platform that emphasizes sovereignty and
disbanding the pro-Iran Hezbollah militia. His “State Building” ticket also
aligns with calls from the Vatican and Maronite Christian Patriarch Bechara
Rai, that Lebanon should toe a policy of regional neutrality.
Lebanon has not conducted a census since 1932.
However, before every election, the interior ministry posts lists of eligible
voters, showing their religious affiliations. At 30 percent of the electorate,
Sunnis are the biggest bloc, with Shiites just slightly less, and then
Christians, at 28 percent. Minorities account for about 12 percent of the vote,
with the Druze being the biggest minority at around 10 percent.
Hezbollah has swept to victory in Baalbek in every
election since 1992. But in 2018, the pro-Iran Shiite militia lost 8 percent of
the vote there (and two of 10 seats) in the district. With the country in
economic free fall since 2019, and popular anger growing, any Shiite rival
poses a threat to the status quo. That is why the militia, fearful of further
losses in parliament, has been harassing candidates like Jawhari.
For instance, last month Jawhari was campaigning in
the town of Khodor, near Baalbek, when he was met with Hezbollah intimidation.
Standing at a podium, the sheikh was saying: “We are going to elect freely, no
one can dictate to us…” as machine gun fire erupted, forcing him to take refuge
with his security detail.
Days later, three candidates from Jawhari’s ticket
ended their campaigns. One of them, Rifaat Al Masri, said: “We are the children
of a resistance family… proud of arms trained at our Zionist and Takfirist
enemies.”
He added, confirming speculation that his withdrawal
came under pressure from Hezbollah, that “as long as the Israeli enemy persists
with its aggression against Lebanon, we stand with the resistance”. Building on
the premise that warring with Israel was Lebanon’s top priority, Masri
concluded: “This election is useless.”
Masri’s comments came shortly after political
developments showed that Lebanon’s problems are only getting deeper and more
complicated.
The World Bank reported that it was delaying funding
for the import of Egyptian gas, a US-backed plan that would pump supplies
through Jordan and Syria to help Lebanon generate desperately needed
electricity. A staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund,
dangling $3 billion in aid if Lebanon applied already agreed reforms, also
looks doomed, given Beirut’s inability to stand up to the rampant corruption of
the ruling oligarchs.
Given these developments it seems that Masri is
right. If, despite all of Lebanon’s misery, Hezbollah can force the debate to
be narrowly about warring with Israel, then the election will indeed be a
wasted opportunity.
In non-Shiite districts, competition between
pro-Hezbollah, non-Shiite oligarchs and non-partisan candidates seems to be
fairer. In the predominantly Maronite town of Beth Anya, Patriarch Rai
sponsored a meeting that called for Lebanon’s neutrality. Half a dozen US
congressional members delivered recorded speeches calling for peace between
Lebanon and Israel and to reintegrate their country into the regional and
global economy.
Uncharacteristically, Hezbollah and its media let
the meeting proceed without interference. The militia was clearly trying to
spare its Maronite allies – such as President Michel Aoun’s son-in-law and
aspiring successor, Gebran Bassil – the embarrassment of having to side with
Hezbollah and against the Maronite religious leadership.
Through coercion that started last year with the
assassination of Shiite political activist Lokman Slim, Hezbollah thinks that
it can keep the Shiites under its thumb. Meanwhile, non-Shiite oligarchs have
either been threatened into submission by earlier acts of violence – such as
the killing of Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 – or rewarded with
government seats (such as Aoun becoming president), or pacified by corruption.
When the Lebanese go to the polls on May 15, global
organizations will report on a ballot that the West will likely see as free and
fair. But Hezbollah will already have twisted enough arms before election day
to keep things going the way it wants, producing an election that will not be
free and fair and more useless than productive.
The
writer is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in
Washington, DC
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