January 17, 2012
A very quick note to point folks in the direction of my post for the NY Times’s Latitude blog this week, which deals with proportional representation in Lebanon. For most of you following the debate, not much of it will come as much of a surprise. For those who have not been following along and would like additional context, see here.
I also recommend Michael Young’s good column on the subject earlier this week, and IFES’s very good overview of the Lebanese electoral system.
January 16, 2012
I can’t resist plugging my father’s recent appearance on Al-Fasad, a great evening talk show in Lebanon that addresses political and economic corruption. Abu Elias addressed, among other things, the issue of parliamentarian compensation in Lebanon, which is scandalously high.
This was the second installment in a series on the subject. See here for his first appearance on the show. And for English speakers, here’s a report from a couple years back that deals with this issue (but its figures do not take into account the expense incurred for insurance premiums…)
On another note, I recommend checking out this Wikileaks cable from 2009, which sheds interesting light on the personalities of the top brass in the Assad regime. (h/t Rime Allaf)
Finally, I feel I should explain my infrequent posting these days. Over the past few months, I’ve been working on finishing up my dissertation, launching a new research project, and preparing for a new job. I’ve got a couple months left before I graduate, and then things should be back to normal around here. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to keep up appearances…
December 28, 2011
I’ve been a little obsessed with the changes in the Arab blogosphere over the past year, and the Syrian blogs are among the most interesting to me, perhaps because I’ve been reading several of these bloggers for years. The shift in perspective as a result of the uprising is remarkable. People like Robin Yassin-Kassab and Off the Wall (and their readers) are elaborating, dialectically, a new meaning of Arab liberalism.
Here are the first few paragraphs from my weekly piece for the New York Times global opinion page, which deals with this subject.
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The images out of Syria this month are gut-wrenching. Two suicide bombers killed dozens of people in Damascus on Friday, an alarming ratcheting-up of the violence in a conflict that some fear is starting to look more like a civil war by the day.
Within hours of the attacks, Twitter, Facebook and the Arab blogosphere were boiling over with claims and counterclaims. Some accepted the Syrian government’s statement that Friday’s bombers were affiliated with Al Qaeda; others, who are sympathetic to the opposition, want to see President Bashar al-Assad fall (see here, here and here).
This highly polarized response is symptomatic of a broader culture war that has recently emerged among Syria watchers. For the first decade of Assad’s presidency, most Syrian blogs I read were fairly supportive of the regime because of its commitment to the Palestinian cause and its opposition to the United States and Israel. But this year has changed everything. (keep reading)
December 22, 2011
Graphic courtesy of Election Guerilla. Click to enlarge.
Much has already been said about the very peculiar electoral law proposed by the Orthodox Gathering and endorsed by all of Lebanon’s Maronite leaders. Civil society groups say that it further entrenches sectarianism. Michael Young writes that it deepens Christian isolation. Meanwhile, Ziyad Baroud is hedging his bets.
My biggest problem with the proposal is very simple: it leads to enormous inequalities of suffrage. What does this mean?
Imagine a country with a parliament divided into quotas based on colors of hair. For example, 20% of the seats are devoted to blond-haired MPs, 35% to redheads, 20% to brown-haired people, 15% to salt-and-pepper, etc.
Once upon a time, this proportional arrangement of seats matched the actual hair-color demographics in the country, but over time, the blonds (who, as a rule, tend to have more fun) multiplied more vigorously than the redheads, while an unfortunate epidemic of male-pattern balding eviscerated the once healthy ranks of the brown-haired.
The redheads, however, are insistent upon maintaining the old quotas, even though demographics have changed. What’s more, they insist that districts should be drawn in such a way as to guarantee that redheaded representatives are elected by majorities of redheads. Why? Because, they argue, a blond MP surely would not advocate for a redhead’s rights in the way that a fellow redhead would.
This is where the troubles begin. If you draw districts in such a way as to maintain “chromatically pure” majorities, then certain districts will inevitably have a much higher ratio of MPs to voters than other districts. For example, redheaded districts might have 1 MP per 10,000 voters, while blond districts could have 40,000 voters to each MP.
The only way around this problem would be to draw much larger districts composed of voting populations with all kinds of hair color, but then you’d have redheaded MPs being elected by blond voters, which is a big problem for the redheaded politicians.
So small districts remain, for the time being…until, one day, the redheaded and brown-haired leaders get together and decide that the current system is still problematic. Even in their well-coiffed enclaves, there are odd pockets of blond and gray-haired voters who can help swing an election the wrong way.
And so they propose a different approach, a law that is the apotheosis of the principle of hair-color representation, and it goes something like this:
“Let’s dispense with the hassles of gerrymandering and turn the entire country into a single district. Let’s institute a system of proportional representation whereby each citizen is only allowed to vote for a list of candidates who have the same color hair as their own. So, for example, if there are 22 seats in Parliament reserved for redheads, then each redhead in the country would cast a vote for one of several different lists of 22 redheaded political candidates, and the seats would be divided up between the lists according to a proportional formula.”
Under this proposed system, the problem of unequal suffrage that we witness in the current system with the small districts would become even more drastic, because there would be no little pockets of blonds and black-haired voters to “dilute” the redheaded and brown-haired votes. Under the new law, the ratio of MPs to voters is no longer dictated by districting, but rather by the cold hard facts of hair color demographics. A redheaded voter would have more voting power than a blond, purely because of the color of their hair, and not because of the district they live in.
Graphic courtesy of Election Guerilla. Click to enlarge
This is, in a nutshell, the Ferzli proposal. (For more reading on inequality of suffrage, check out this post I wrote last year on the subject).
Let me just conclude by pointing out the obvious, namely that nobody but Najib Mikati and President Suleiman are actually interested in implementing proportional representation. When I met with several of Hariri’s allies, advisors, and representatives last month, they all basically regurgitated the same set of talking points: “If we adopt PR, Hizbullah will be able to win 10 Sunni seats, while we’ll only be able to take one Shiite seat. We can’t have PR until there’s a level playing field, and our Shiite candidates are not intimidated or threatened by Hizbullah.”
Naturally Walid Jumblatt is completely opposed to PR, as is Nabih Berri. The Christians don’t like it because it will require having larger voting districts (12-14 rather than the current 28 or so), which means that many Christian MPs will be elected by Muslim majorities. (This is what makes it particularly nauseating to listen to Amin Gemayel and Michel Aoun going on about restoring “Christian rights” when the system they are championing is so ludicrously out of step with democratic principles and demographic realities. See the second graphic above for a clear proof of just how good the 2009 law is for Christian representation…)
Therefore, the current proposal from Elie Ferzli is probably being supported by the Christian leadership only to guarantee that the end result of the bargaining process over the electoral law will be the 2009 law, warts and all.
Arabic speakers can read an introduction to the actual law here. I’d also like to thank my good friend Election Guerilla for the very helpful graphics above. As he suggested to me in an email: “The proposed system simply flaunts the inequality of confessional representation (and it is perhaps unsurprising that the most over-represented Christian group under the proposal would be … the Greek Orthodox!”
More on this as the story develops…
December 14, 2011
I’ve written something for the NY Times Global’s Latitude blog about one of Nasrallah’s Ashura speeches last month. In the interest of space, I couldn’t include extensive translations from the speech, so I thought I’d make them available here. For context and the broader argument, check out the original post here.
I’ve been criticized before for my admiration of Nasrallah’s rhetorical skills, but I found the speech in question deeply disturbing (and unfortunately, so did Saida’s Salafists). This is an aspect of Hizbullah that its liberal admirers like to ignore, imagining that the Party of God is far more progressive and non-confessional than its “feudal,” “fascist,” “right-wing,” “clientelist” opponents. I’m always puzzled by this notion, because it seems fairly straightforward that Hizbullah is just as adept at anyone at deploying sectarianism in the service of politics.
I challenge you seasoned Lebanon-watchers to listen to the final segment of the speech (I’ve cued it to the right spot) and tell me that it is not one of the most blatant and unashamed examples of sectarian incitement they’ve heard coming out of the mouth of a Lebanese politician in recent memory. (The relevant section is translated below for English speakers, along with time stamps).
I leave you with this thought. If Samir Geagea were to give a speech calling Nasrallah a modern-day Judas Iscariot, or if Saad Hariri wrote a tweet accusing the Shi`a of being heretical Uthman-killers and Aisha-slanderers, how quickly do you think the March 8th media outlets would be down their throats, calling them bloody-minded sectarian feudal warlords? I’m no fan of any of the individuals attached to the proper names cited in this post, but let’s be serious for a moment and recognize demagoguery when we see it.
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[1:06:38] “When we speak about al-Husayn, we are speaking about his suffering but also his steadfastness. We begin with his abandonment by the people despite the fact that he was the son of the daughter of the Prophet of God… This would cause any human being to suffer.
[1:06:58] For example, you felt, during the July War, that you were on the side of righteousness, and yet you were being killed and shot and [your homes] destroyed, and many people in the world left you, abandoned you, and even blamed you and insulted you. Did this not cause great pain in you?
[1:07:23] Al-Husayn’s abandonment is the first [cause of his suffering]. The second is the treachery of those who swore their allegiance to him and then abandoned him. This is even more painful. There were people who abandoned us and did not aid us [during the July War] but there were others who promised us help and pledged their allegiance to us and committed to us, then defamed us and attacked us… this was also the case of Husayn. At the very least, they could have sat on the sidelines and been neutral, but no: they attacked and killed him. This added to his suffering.
[1:07:51] The constant threat of being killed from Medina, to Mecca, to Karbala: this caused suffering. A severe siege, severe thirst… al-Husayn and his wives and his children and companions were prevented from drinking water for several days before they were martyred… You go to speak to [your tormentors] and they don’t listen to you; this causes suffering. Imagine if you were the grandson of the Prophet… Sometimes one goes through such an experience. Even if you speak for a hundred years or two hundred, it doesn’t matter. Some people are not interested in listening.
[1:09:00] The third thing [that causes suffering] is fighting with few supporters. This choice is also difficult. And finally, the arrival at the stage of martyrdom. Martyrs were falling right in front of al-Husayn. His loved ones, his brethren. Who were these martyrs?
[1:09:18] Some of you are the fathers, mothers, siblings of martyrs. Everyone knows that when one’s son or brother is martyred, one suffers. What if your son is killed in front of your eyes? Your feelings would be different. If people came and told you that your son was hit during the battle, he was killed, he was martyred, etc., you would suffer.
[1:09:51] But when we speak of Karbala, we are always speaking about the highest ceiling [of emotions]. Al-Husayn’s son was killed in his arms, Ali al-Akbar [Ed: I think he meant Ali al-Asghar here]. Imagine if your son was a young man who exceled and fought and was martyred… you would suffer. But this is completely different from one whose son is an infant, a baby, a few months old. You hold him in your arms, and ask for some water for him, and he is slaughtered in your arms. And his blood runs upon you. How much more painful is this?
[1:10:35] We have families who have lost one, or two, or three martyrs over the course of years; their brothers, their children. Those who were killed with al-Husayn at Karbala were his children, in his arms and in front of him. His brothers, all of whom were young. Al-Husayn was himself young, only 57. His brothers were all younger than him. They were killed, along with their children, their cousins; this is all painful. Then the weeping of the women; mothers bereaved of children, widows. When you go into the home of a martyr’s family, with the mother or the wife crying, your heart breaks. Al-Husayn looked all around him and saw these eyes full of tears; the weeping of orphans, from hunger, thirst, and pain. And on top of all that were the wounds inflicted upon him. And in the final moments, on top of the wounds, the screams of women and children, as the warriors attacked the tents and the fires were lit.
[1:11:58] How much pain did this one heart endure? And how much can a human heart endure? And yet, al-Husayn was not shaken, he did not retreat, he did not weaken, he did not stumble, he did not submit, and nor did his companions…
[1:12:41] This is our leader. This is Karbala, from which we learn the lessons of steadfastness, and honesty, and the loyal pledge [Ed: repeated in mid-stride to correct the case from accusative to genitive... amazing]. This is the school in which we sit these days and nights, learning, suffering, crying. You and I are the ones who pledged our allegiance to al-Husayn in our Resistance in Lebanon. We are the ones who went out to fight the occupiers, even though were only a small minority. And we are a minority that is accused of insanity, accused of committing ourselves to ruin, accused of not understanding balances of power, accused of acting with the zeal of immature young men…
[1:14:00] My brethren, on this night… we say to al-Husayn: “If only we were with you at Karbala, so that we could have won a great victory!” As one, we say to al-Husayn on this night, and repeat it on every night, and on the tenth day: “Oh great leader and martyr, we, men and women, in these difficult times, despite all the challenges, dangers, threats, insults, and the determination and trickery of the enemy, and despite the scarcity of our supporters, oh Abu Abdallah, we will not abandon you, or your religion, or your flock, or your Karbala, or your goals, even if we are killed and burned, and our wives and children are captured as yours were. We say to you that we – men, women, children, elderly, young – who were steadfast and withstood the July War, are not frightened by their war, their weapons, threats, and trickery. Just as we were steadfast before, we shall continue, as long as there runs in our veins a drop of your blood, and a breath of your breath is in our bodies, and your strength is in us, and your will, we will remain Husayns and Zaynabs, and we repeat with you until the end of time: “Hayhat minna ‘l-dhilla!”
November 30, 2011
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati was expected to make a major address today concerning the stalemate over the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was threatening to bring down his government.
Mikati did speak to the media, but it was only to say that he had transferred Lebanon’s share of the funding (around $33 million) earlier this morning. The STL confirmed receipt of the funds, so it seems that Lebanon has dodged another bullet.
As of this moment, here’s what we don’t know:
A few minutes of Internet research turned up the 2011-2012 budget for the Prime Minister’s office, which is around a billion US dollars per year (click here to see the spreadsheet, to which I’ve added an extra column converting the figures from [thousands of] liras to dollars).
I have no idea how accurate these figures are, or which pot Mr. Mikati pulled the STL funding from. There are line items in there that are extremely vague (see for example #32, which is devoted to “foreign funding” to the tune of one third of a billion dollars). One would have to assume that there are more detailed figures elsewhere.
At any rate, I’m no expert on government budgets, but it seems odd to me that a Prime Minister of a country like Lebanon should have discretionary spending powers on over one billion dollars. The President’s budget, by contrast, is around $11 million, and the budget for the entire Parliament is $45 million. If anyone has more information on this issue, please feel free to leave it in the comment section. In the meantime, I will try to get an answer from Mr. Mikati’s advisors about where the money for the STL is coming from.
November 25, 2011
Today has been a very silly day in Lebanese politics. A cabinet session scheduled to address various issues unrelated to the funding of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) had to be canceled because ministers belonging to General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement decided not to turn up.
The reason? According to various sources, it was to send a signal that the FPM is prepared to resign and “turn the tables on the opposition”, with respect to the STL funding issue, which must be brought to a vote at next Wednesday’s cabinet meeting. Minister of Energy Gebran Bassil told the AFP that the signal had to do with the FPM’s unhappiness with the government’s performance, not necessarily on the issue of the STL.
Come again?
Let’s remind ourselves that the FPM is the majority partner in the Mikati government. In other words, they are the government. There is no meaningful opposition to their policies. So how can they be disappointed in the government’s performance?
Even by the cynical standards we’ve grown accustomed to, this latest move by the FPM takes the cake. Between 2005 and 2009, they complained because they weren’t given the Presidency. Between 2009 and 2011, they complained because they didn’t have enough seats in government. And now that they are the single largest bloc in the cabinet, they are threatening to bring down their own government because of its poor performance?
In an Arab world where tyrants are struggling to hold on to their seats, Lebanon’s leaders are trying to find ways to get out of theirs as quickly as possible.
No one is fooled that this move doesn’t have everything to do with Najib Mikati’s own vow to resign if the STL’s funding is not approved at next week’s meeting. But the FPM’s counter-threat to resign first is an escalation typical of the blustering and irrational theatrics of Michel Aoun. “You think you can scare us with your resignation, Najib? Well then, we’ll resign first! Ha!“
Amateur psychological analysis aside, what does this puzzling strategy tell us about what the STL funding issue means to the March 8 coalition? Obviously, there’s no way that Hizbullah can support the STL since they are being targeted by it. Nor can one expect AMAL to break with Hizbullah on any issue. But the FPM surely could have elected to play some kind of conciliatory or mediating role rather than walking such a hard line. Why be more Catholic than the Pope?
My own conversations with a few FPM insiders over the past couple days suggest that there is considerable befuddlement and frustration with the position that the party finds itself in.
And let’s not forget that resigning and bringing down the current government would only make matters worse — for Aoun, for Hizbullah, and ultimately for Syria. By pushing the magic button and sending Lebanon into its familiar tailspin, Aoun can dodge the STL funding bullet. But this measure will certainly not bring the STL’s activities to a halt. All it will do is create chaos in the near term and possible sanctions in the long term.
Maybe Aoun and Hizbullah would prefer that kind of combative atmosphere to the current situation, where they look worse and worse each day as the Arabs, the Turks, the Europeans, and the Americans keep heaping more pressure on Damascus. Or maybe Aoun is just bluffing. We’ll know sooner rather than later.
At the end of the day, March 8 needs to wake up and face the fact that they’re not going to get away from the Tribunal issue by changing prime ministers every few months.
November 23, 2011
Ever since Najib Mikati took over as Prime Minister of Lebanon earlier this year, things have gone relatively smoothly. With no opposition in the cabinet, there have been few opportunities for conflict (with the exception of the odd squabble between Michel Aoun and his disgruntled allies).
All that could change next week. The cabinet must finally take up the ticking time bomb that they’ve been avoiding for months (and which was the downfall of Saad Hariri’s government), namely the issue of funding the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).
For obvious reasons, Hizbullah is opposed to funding the court, as is AMAL. And Michel Aoun, per his usual custom, has played the role of the intransigent rejectionist to the hilt, going so far as to declare: “Even if Hizbullah approves the funding, we’ll vote against it.”
The problem is that it’s not in Hizbullah’s interests, at this stage, to create an international incident over the STL, and this is what may well happen if Lebanon reneges on its obligation to the court. The Americans and Europeans have made it abundantly clear over the past several weeks that there would be dire consequences if Lebanon severs its ties to the STL.
What this means is still unclear. However, when one combines Lebanon’s recent stance at the Arab League on the Syrian uprising with the prospect of ending its cooperation with the Tribunal, it seems straightforward to assume that Hizbullah’s opponents (in Lebanon and abroad) will seize the opportunity to argue that the Mikati government is nothing more than an extension of the Syrian regime, and should be treated as such by the international community.
Hizbullah would prefer to avoid such a scenario, as they understand that their position on Syria has not done them many favors in Lebanon or the rest of the region. The problem is, even if they wanted to find a solution that would keep the hounds at bay while allowing them to save face by voting against the funding, it’s not clear how they would do so.
As far as I have been able to ascertain from my conversations in Beirut this week, approving the funding requires a simple majority vote in the thirty-member cabinet. At present, Hizbullah and its allies hold eighteen seats, while the remaining twelve are divided between ministers loyal to Mikati, President Sleiman, and Walid Jumblatt. In other words, there is no way to compose the necessary majority to approve the funding without using ministers from the shares of Hizbullah, Amal, or the FPM.
So we’re faced with a situation whereby either one of those three parties has to reverse its policy on the funding, or they all hold a firm line and Lebanon drops the STL like a bad habit. Neither scenario is ideal, from the current majority’s perspective.
One possible solution that has been floated is that the cabinet passes the hot potato to the Parliament, where a majority in favor of the funding can be assembled by having Walid Jumblatt vote with his old allies. I’m not sure this is a constitutionally legitimate move, but I’ve been told that it could be the basis for a typically Lebanese fudge.
Whatever happens, we’re sure to see Saad Hariri make a serious push next week at the Tripoli gathering to put as much pressure as possible on Najib Mikati to resign. My sense is that Hizbullah would prefer to keep this government afloat and out of the Syrian cross-fire, but not at the expense of voting for the tribunal themselves. If the parliamentary solution doesn’t work and the cabinet can’t muster the votes, Mikati will probably walk and Hizbullah will let him do so.
In that scenario, we’ll be back to treading water with no government, and things will be… interesting, yet again.
[An earlier version of this post stated that a two-thirds super-majority was required to approve the funding. I'm now being told that a simple majority will do, as there are no new international treaties being signed.]
November 23, 2011
Greetings to all from Beirut, where I’ve been meeting with MPs, civil society folks, and good friends about the Lebanese senate project I’m working on. Will have more to say on this score when I’m back in Cambridge, but for now, I thought I’d direct you to a new International Herald Tribune / NY Times Global opinion blog called Latitude, which has just launched. I have a piece there today on the STL and its discontents.
November 18, 2011
I’m off to Beirut this weekend to do some work on a research project I’ve been developing at Stanford’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. The project deals with the challenge of establishing an upper legislative chamber in Lebanon, which is called for by the Ta’if Accord. I’ve written on this subject in the past, and we’ve held some good debates about it here at QifaNabki. The results of the project will be made available at some point in the spring, at which point I’ll look forward to getting some feedback from the readership.
I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for blogging while I’m on the go, but I’ll weigh in if anything interesting happens. (Rumor has it that a Mikati resignation is a distinct possibility in the near term, particularly if Hizbullah decides to play hardball on STL funding or the situation in Syria gets much worse.) Stay tuned…
 | Norman on Lebanon, By the Numbers |
 | Parrhesia on Lebanon, By the Numbers |
| Parrhesia on Lebanon, By the Numbers |
 | Bad Vilbel on Lebanon, By the Numbers |
 | Karim El Mufti on Lebanese Parliamentarians… |
What I’m reading…
