Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

I had lunch with one of Lebanon’s top pollsters a couple of days ago, and I asked him about whose chances he liked, now that we’re just over three months away from the parliamentary elections.

He said that Aoun had not lost as much support among Christians as his opponents are claiming. In fact, many of those Lebanese who began to question Aoun’s judgment after the Memorandum of Understanding with Hizbullah, the July War, and the events of May 7 2008, seem to have come around again as a result of the pitiful Christian leadership on the March 14th side. Still, Murr’s alliance with the Kataeb, Nayla Tueni’s candidacy in Achrafieh, and the unpopularity of Skaff in Zahle, he suggested, could be enough to hold off a March 8th win.

When I asked about whom he thought the opposition had in mind for a prime minister in the event that they did win, he gave a rather surprising answer.

“Saad al-Hariri”.

Why not? Makes perfect sense when you think about it. Nasrallah is lowering expectations for any sweeping changes while he calls for power-sharing and national unity. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Syria are burying the hatchet while Fouad al-Saniora is shown the door. Saad’s current protestations notwithstanding, it is not so hard to imagine a deal being worked out to make everybody happy, wolves and lambs alike.

Of course, should such an arrangement come to pass, it would represent a high-water mark of cynicism, even for Lebanon. For what better way to drive home to the miserable Lebanese electorate that its fate – as determined by the long-heralded ‘fateful’ elections – is to endure four more years of the same old faces in the same old positions, despite having voted the opposition coalition into power?

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. After all, in order to have the privilege of choosing Saad al-Hariri as the next PM, the current opposition needs to win the election, right? How are they going to achieve that? Well, let’s do the numbers.

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For me, the best part of CNN’s election coverage last November was John King and his Magic Wall of Electoral Wisdom. You know what I’m taking about: the enormous flat-panel monitor that conjured up color-coded maps and real-time voting data at the flick of a well-manicured finger. Some may have tuned in to watch Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, and “the best political team on television,” but I only had eyes for the touch screen. What a brilliant way to enliven the prosaic slog through the time zones as county after county sent in its returns.

No state – not even a bastion of partisanship – was safe from the Screen’s amazing factoid-creating abilities. With decades of data at his fingertips, John could even make Alabama look interesting. He had but to gaze at the oracle and intone: “Touch Screen, Touch Screen, on the wall… which party has historically fared well in Tallapoosa County in election years with an incumbent Republican president, a slumping economy, and cloudy skies with a chance of showers?” The Screen would respond immediately, and we all somehow felt smarter for being invited to put two and two together with John, even if the answer was still boring old ‘four’.

I’m a sucker for fiddly technology of any stripe, so imagine my excitement upon discovering the electoral law simulator over at the Civil Campaign for Electoral Reform. This little gadget, along with El Nashra’s “Virtual Elections” online polling feature, and the strategy discussions held over at the FPM’s 2009 Parliamentary Elections Forum (a veritable goldmine of anecdotal ‘data’) has prompted me to devise my own election predictions, represented in the chart below.

This scenario — where Hizbullah, Amal, Future, PSP, and the LF win everywhere that they are expected to, and the FPM & Suleiman Frangieh’s Marada have a very strong showing — gives 52 seats to March 14th and 56 to March 8th, with 20 seats up for grabs in three battleground districts: Beirut 1 (Achrafieh), Zahle, and the Metn. This, in my opinion, is about as strong a position as March 8th can put it itself in, going into the elections. If they split the remaining seats with March 14th, they would win a 51.6% majority in the parliament: enough to choose the PM, but hardly a resounding victory.

March 14th’s own prospects are not much better. To eke out a victory against Hizbullah & co, they will have to limit Aoun’s gains in places like Baabda (which M14 only won in 2005 thanks to effective gerrymandering), while taking back Zahle and holding Achrafieh.

What does this mean, oh Touch Screen? Tune in next month, for Part 2.

Michael Young, opinion editor of the Daily Star, has an interesting op-ed today (“On Not Debating Christopher Hitchens”) about Hitchens’ visit to Beirut and the lecture he gave, entitled “Who are the Revolutionaries In Today’s Middle East?” In the article, Young sets his sights on a surprising target: the audience at the lecture, the majority of whom were students at the American University of Beirut. From Young’s perspective, Hitchens’ talk was a sad exercise in throwing pearls before swine, such was the ingratitude and boorishness of his interlocutors:

“You could distil his argument down to one sentence: The Arab world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and the US, alongside the true “Arab revolutionaries”, is responsible for this outcome. Instead of addressing that point, many in the audience resorted to the oldest of rhetorical subterfuges: When you don’t like an argument, change the subject; which only tended to show how we in the region seem incapable of engaging in constructive self-doubt about our own affairs.”

I was at the lecture, and while I might agree with Young about the lackluster quality of most of the questions, I think he does a disservice to the intelligence of most of the attendees when he accuses them of failing to lap up whatever slop Hitchens threw before them.

And slop it was, if we are being fair. Christopher Hitchens is a deeply learned man and one worth listening to on a great many subjects, but his performance at AUB that night was one that a younger version of himself would have brilliantly and mercilessly eviscerated. The subject matter at hand – the moral prerogative of interventionism, the role of the United States in overthrowing dictatorships and spreading democracy, the utter bankruptcy of the Arab nationalist project, the oppressiveness of various theocratic movements, etc. – are all worthy and serious themes for debate. And this is precisely why I was so disappointed to hear Hitchens make his case, because he did it so poorly and childishly. Rather than laying out a thoughtful and carefully-reasoned answer to the important question of what it means to be a revolutionary in today’s Middle East, he waxed on endlessly about Kurdistan, Walid Jumblatt, Kurdistan, head scarves, gas chambers, and Kurdistan. It was a flashy, overbearing, and jingoistic performance that really fooled no one. Except, surprisingly, Michael Young.

The problem with the lecture was not its thesis (“The Arab world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and the US… is responsible for this outcome”), but rather Hitchens’ unwillingness or inability to outline the corollaries and conclusions that derive from it. Should Middle Eastern revolutionaries pledge themselves to the cause of the United States even when it does not act “in the defense of universal liberal values”? What about in the vast majority of cases where it acts in direct opposition to those values? Does the acceptance of Saddam’s deposal validate the means by which it was achieved, and exonerate the mistakes made in the course of the war effort? These were not questions meant to evade Hitchens’ thesis; rather, they constituted one invitation after another (consistently rejected and evaded by the real master of rhetorical subterfuges in that room) to make his case for an America-centered theory of Middle Eastern revolution.

At one point in his article, Young argues that Hitchens is one of the few Western public intellectuals to confront the burning question that has faced the left in recent years, namely:

“If a tyrannical leader is abusing his own people, is it the duty of the left to confront him in all ways possible, including force, because that may be the only course open in defending human rights and human liberty, even if this requires depending on the United States for its success?”

A valid question, but a naïve one? After all, in how many cases can leftist revolutionaries depend on the United States to confront tyrannical and abusive leaders in our region? No one made this point more convincingly and thoughtfully than Rami Khoury, who argued that while many people would agree with Hitchens about the failure and oppressiveness of the existing state system, they cannot count on a muscular and principled stance against tyranny from the United States in the vast majority of cases. The entire hall erupted in applause when Rami made his point. Hitchens’ response? A sulking one-liner about moral equivalency.

Mr. Young, Christopher Hitchens did not come to Beirut to debate anyone. He came to make a spectacle of himself on the streets of Hamra and in the newspapers. There are many eloquent and sensible advocates of the United States out there; the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation shouldn’t confine itself to an opportunistic and glib ex-communist who “once wrote a book with Edward Said.”

Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid pens a curious editorial in Asharq al-Awsat (via FLC) about the misspent foreign aid that Saudi Arabia has been doling out. After bashing Nabih Berri’s abusive treatment of Fouad Siniora and discussing the inevitable squabbles that will surround the billion dollar gift that KSA is planning for Gaza, al-Rashid takes aim, oddly, at Siniora’s government:

ومهما كان المستفيد فإن على متعهد المعونة السعودية، وغيرها من المساعدات الموعودة، أن تكشف بشكل تفصيلي وعلني عن المستفيدين منها، حتى يعرف أنها تحقق الغرض منها، بإيصالها للمتضررين المحتاجين، وبالسرعة القصوى، بخلاف المعونة السعودية في لبنان التي مر عامان عليها ولم ينفق إلا القليل منها. فقد صرفت الحكومة اللبنانية معظمها على حاجاتها. وهو أمر غريب، ولا أعتقد أن الجانب السعودي منحها هدية للحكومة، بل للناس المتضررين من الحرب، وعلى السنيورة إعادة الأموال إلى المتبرع بها.

[Translation: "Whoever the beneficiary may be, it is incumbent upon the one in charge of [disbursing] the Saudi gift and any other promised aid, to reveal in a detailed and public fashion the beneficiaries of the aid so that it may be known that its purpose was achieved… in contrast to the Saudi aid in Lebanon, of which little has been spent over the past two years. The Lebanese government has spent most of it on its own needs. This is a puzzling matter, and I don’t think that the Saudis granted it as a gift to the [Lebanese] government, but rather for the people affected by the war, and Siniora is responsible for returning the funds to their donor.“]

What to make of this? Are the Saudis slapping Siniora’s wrist? If so, why, and particularly now, when he is looking for a graceful exit strategy from the PM’s office? Some may suggest that this has something to do with the Saudi-Syrian reconciliation, but it seems a bit too heavy-handed. For insight, I turned to my good friend Alex, from Syria Comment, a veritable expert on the subtle and not-so-subtle messages conveyed by Saudi newspapers.  Here is what he had to say:

I see it as part of the series of opinion pieces in Asharq, QN.

Check out the other one by their stupid editor [Tareq Alhomayed] who insists on seeing everything in his own favorite way … now he sees Syria and Iran panicking and therefore they will cause Lebanon some future pain:

For the coming months expect Asharq to be engaged in trying to influence the Lebanese elections by tarnishing the reputation of Aoun, Hizbollah and of course Syria and Iran.

The difference between Tareq and Abdel Rahman, is that Abdel Rahman always finds some creative issue through which he can deliver an indirect blow to the bad guys, whereas Tareq is more straightforward.

Any thoughts? Are the Saudis letting Siniora hear the branch creak? Or is this Asharq’s attempt at even-handedness?

I thought I might draw your attention to a hilarious discussion on the FPM comment boards about whom the Aounists should nominate to face the Young Turks of March 14′s Christian parties (also known as the Related-To-Martyrs List). I’m referring, of course, to Michel “Micho” Mouawad (son of slain prez René Mouawad), Sami Gemayel (brother of slain Minister Pierre Gemayel), Nadim Gemayel (son of slain prez Bachir Gemayel), and ridiculous hottie Nayla Tueni (daughter of slain MP and an-Nahar editor, Gebran Tueni). Here is one suggestion for an FPM list to face this formidable challenge.

Beneath the Aounist merriment, make no mistake, is a good deal of hand-wringing. After all, Micho could easily step into his mother’s shoes, denying Suleiman Frangieh a clean sweep in Zgharta. Nayla Tueni is a pretty good bet for a seat in Achrafieh, one of the three big swing districts by my estimation. As for the Gemayels… I suppose it depends on whose list they end up on.

In other news, a cop was pulled over in Dahiyeh last night by a bunch of armed men, stripped of his weapons and vehicle (which was sprayed with bullets) and made to leave the southern suburb on foot. What does this mean? At the very least, that it is going to be a very long week for Ibrahim al-Moussawi (who has apparently returned to his post as media relations director for the Hizb).

I have finally tracked down the source of the rumors concerning the connection between the MEA fiascoes and the Hariri tribunal. Jeha’s Nail and Blacksmiths of Lebanon were reporting that Joseph Sader (the kidnapped MEA official) “processed and prepared files related to the Hariri assassination case,” and that Ghassan Miqdad (the murdered MEA pilot) “had transported the Hariri files to the Hague on February 9.” The source of these delicious nuggets? The Kuwaiti National Enquirer, al-Seyassah. Oh well.

What else? It looks like Fouad Saniora may be running for parliament. The Daily Star urges him to consider running in Beirut as opposed to Saida (that is Bahia’ s turf, obviously). Can anyone explain to me why Saida only gets two parliament seats, compared to Beirut’s 19 and Tripoli’s 8? Meanwhile, its suburb Zahrani gets 3, chosen at Nabih Berri’s whim. Even by Lebanese standards, this level of gerrymandering seems quite egregious.

In other news,  as some of you may have noticed, I recently switched over to a new domain, qifanabki.com. (Hey, who said that anonymity precludes vanity?) I believe that any links to the old site (qifanabki.wordpress.com) will remain valid, but just to be on the safe side, you may consider updating any blogroll links and RSS feeds to the new site address. Speaking of RSS, let me take this opportunity to introduce you to it. (Old hands, please don’t snicker! Apparently only 5-10% of web users know what RSS is and how to use it).

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. If you’re like me, and have a bunch of blogs, newspapers, or magazines that you like to read on a regular basis, RSS makes your life a lot easier by bringing all of the text from those websites into one place for you to peruse, and then updating them whenever there is new content. It’s like having your own personal newspaper, dig? So, rather than having to go back to check on whether each of your thirty favorite blogs has been updated, you simply check your web-based news reader and it puts all the new content in front of you on a single page. (NB: if you have a life, just ignore this entire post).

All you have to do to make use of this resource is click the orange icon above, and then follow the simple instructions on the feed page. Here’s a hint: if you use an email address from Yahoo or AOL or Hotmail or Google, it probably makes most sense for you to use the “web-based news reader” that is associated with that address (i.e. My Yahoo, My AOL, My.Live.Com, or Google Reader) because when you check your email each day, all of your news feeds will be just a click away. Questions? Feel free to email me (qifablog |at| g m a i l . c o m).

Yet another alternative is to receive content from this blog via email, which you can do by clicking here and supplying your email address.

Either way, you won’t need to come here for trenchant, incisive, up-to-the-minute coverage on the state of your Phoenician homeland; the coverage will come to you, Beirut delivery style.

Lawrence Osborne was part of the media junket flown to Lebanon last week by the March 14th lobby in Washington. Along with Christopher Hitchens and Michael Totten (and Charles Krauthammer, for all we know), he was brought in to observe the big rally and presumably to collect enough soundbytes to drizzle in his writings over the next few months. Why March 14th thought that a travel writer and wine connoisseur who knows little about Lebanon would be an effective propagandist is puzzling. Were they hoping that he would manage to slip in a few cheery mentions of Siniora, UNSCR 1701, and the Hariri tribunal in an article about the effects of the Andean snowmelt on the acidity of Chilean cabernets? No, it seems that Osborne felt he had it in him to try some political commentary on for size. Here are some choice tidbits:

We walked all along the Corniche first, passing the war-ruined Holiday Inn and the new Dubai-style condo towers of Waffic Sinno: children carrying flagpoles bigger than themselves, old women with faces painted red and blue, teenage girls in blue hats crying “Saad! Saad!”–the name of Rafiq’s son, now the anointed hero of what has come to be called the “March 15 movement.”

M15, huh? A felicitous slip of the pen? (The impressions throughout the article do have an Ian Fleming-ish cast to them). Aww, who can keep all these Marches straight? I mean, there are two after all.

Beirut is a schizophrenic city these days. Driving along its coastal roads near Juneirah it looks like Genova or Nice.

I’ll tell you what happened here. I’m fairly sure that Lawrence meant “Jounieh”, but couldn’t be bothered to reach for his guide book to figure out how to spell the name of the town with all the Bulgarian strippers, so he played a little fast and loose and mixed it up with Jumeira, i.e. the island in Dubai in the shape of a palm tree. Hence, Juneirah. No big whoop.

Like the denizens of an Evelyn Waugh tale, the “March 15 movement” is opposed by the “March 8 movement” of Islamicists, and ubiquitous armed checkpoints keep the two Marches apart. The Beirut papers that weekend reported Nasrullah’s opinion that his men now needed “air defense weapons,” and as Hezbollah’s power rises, there is a feeling among the non-insane citizens of the city that bad times could return at any moment.

Fast forward to June 2009, where March 8th wins a slim majority in Lebanon’s parliament. Lawrence’s expert conclusion: over 50% of Lebanon’s voters are not only Islamists, they are also insane.

But later that night, three of our “scoop” brigade–Jonathan Foreman, Michael Totten and Christopher Hitchens–got involved in a street brawl with some thugs of a Syria-loving skinhead party called the SNPN after Hitchens rather gallantly insulted their swastika flag.

Yes, you know, the SNPN, arch-enemy of the M15 movement, with its headquarters in Juneira. The Syrian Nazi Party errrr… Nationalists? Whatever. M15 tells me they’re good-for-nothin’s and I believe them.

We tore up to the Shuf at 120 mph in SUVs, forcing people off the road and blasting horns. These are the most blood-soaked foothills on earth, a maze of valleys and pinnacles that make up the feudal mystery of Mount Lebanon… [Jumblatt] offered me the wine he helps make on his estates, Chateau Kefraya.”Socialist wine,” he murmured, since the party he heads is officially called the Progressive Socialist Party. The party isn’t very socialist, and the wine wasn’t very socialist either–it was perfectly international, though.

Mmmm, yes, blood-soaked foothills, feudal mysteries… our stock in trade. By the way, Lawrence, everybody who drives up to the Shuf does it at 120 mph, forcing people off the road and blasting horns. You weren’t getting preferential treatment. And would it have killed you to throw in a subtle segue from “blood-soaked hills” to the pungent terroir of Chateau Kefraya? That would have been sweet.

On the one hand, I’m glad that there’s someone in Washington spending money to bring opinion-makers to Lebanon. I just wish that they were doing it in a slightly less boneheaded fashion. I mean, who am I to quibble with a strategy that has wine writers pressing the flesh with Geagea, Jumblatt, and Chalabi? On the other hand, if anybody who’s anybody in Washington is taking this stuff seriously, they will have to conclude that Lebanon is caught in a struggle between two diametrically opposed movements: one that is a combination of insane Nazis and Islamists, and the other that is somehow a Lebanese extension of British military intelligence headquartered near a floating island in the shape of a palm tree.

Memo to March 14th: The 2005 vintage seems to have been a beaujolais nouveau. It’s held up fairly well but it will soon be undrinkable. If you’d let Lawrence meet anybody else, he would have discovered that for himself.

Update: The errors in the Forbes article have been corrected.

I went to hear Christopher Hitchens speak at AUB tonight. Before leaving work, I called my friend S. to see if he was still planning on going. He picked up the phone and said: “Did you hear?

“What?”

“There’s a rumor that Hitchens got beaten up by SSNP thugs in Hamra a couple of nights ago.”

“Is it true?”

“Don’t know. Angry Arab had a thing about it.”

Curious to see Hitch with a black eye, I headed over to the lecture which was entitled: “Who are the Revolutionaries in the Middle East Today?” The auditorium was crowded when he showed up, sans signs of SSNP punishment. He launched his talk by explaining that his real topic would be “The Ironies of History,” and proceeded to wax philosophic about the dangers of moral equivalency, the evil of Hasan Nasrallah, the greatness of Bush, the incoherence of religion, the need for secular nationalist revolutionaries, the white man’s burden, etc. It was signature late Hitchens: an arch and pompous parody of himself.

Elbowing my way to the front of the crowd after the talk, I managed to ask him whether the rumor was true. Had he, in fact, been beaten up in Hamra by the secular nationalist revolutionaries of the SSNP? It was, Hitchens confirmed. “They broke my glases, tried to break my finger. They roughed me up.”

Ironies of history indeed.

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I thought of a worthy new MasterCard advertisement.

Here goes:

Tax credits: $115,000,000,000

State medicaid programs: $87,000,000,000

Refurbishment of the electrical grid: $30,000,000,000

Other stimulus bill expenditures: $557,000,000,000

Using taxpayer dollars to bail out Wall Street and avoid the greatest economic disaster in the history of the United States: Priceless.

In a speech commemorating the one-year anniversary of Imad Mughniyeh’s death, Hizbullah secretary-general Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah lingered briefly on the subject of Rafiq al-Hariri’s assassination, saying that it was an event that the entire nation mourned. Striking a tone both solemn and conciliatory, Nasrallah paid homage to the idols of his political opponents by way of seeking a response in kind for Hizbullah’s fallen heroes. Similarly, he conveyed the condolences of his party to the family of Lutfi Zeineddine, the PSP partisan killed by hoodlums on the way home from the March 14 rally on Saturday, while reminding the nation that this was one crime in a string of tragic incidents to befall Lebanese families on both sides of the political divide.

Listening to Nasrallah, one often feels caught in the spell of an enthralling performer, an eminently frank, reasonable, and straight-talking figure who is – by Lebanese politicians’ standards – refreshingly free of BS. Whatever one thinks of Hizbullah’s political and theological orientations, it is easy to see why Nasrallah has developed a large following outside his party, due to his masterful skills of communication and uncanny political instincts. He is the Bill Clinton of the Shiite Crescent, the Winston Churchill of the Islamic Resistance. He could teach brain surgery to 12 year-olds, such is the clarity and lucidity with which he conveys complicated ideas and cuts through touchy terrain.

One of the most interesting parts of the speech, from my perspective, came toward the end, when Nasrallah discussed the upcoming elections. He said (and I paraphrase): Lebanon is not Switzerland. We are not a nation of political parties. We are a nation of sects, and even those parties established on the basis of a political identity are de facto sectarian parties because their constituents come primarily from one sect (i.e. like the PSP and the FPM). Perhaps, one day, Lebanon will have evolved to the point where its parties are purely political; in that scenario, it would be possible for a party or coalition to rule in a dominant manner after winning an election in a decisive fashion. However, we are not at that stage yet, and therefore, a ruling coalition must govern through a process of consensus, respecting the concerns of its opposition.

He continued: This is why we are telling you from now, that should our coalition win a majority in the upcoming elections, we will be prepared to form a national unity government with the other side, granting them a blocking veto. We do this in the spirit of consensus, and in the spirit of confronting together the many economic, political, and security-related challenges that face our nation.

Nasrallah then threw down the gauntlet, saying: If the other side rejects our offer and chooses to boycott the new government, our coalition will not hesitate to rule on its own (while respecting the interests of the nation.) In making this point, Nasrallah was sending a very clear message to those on the March 14th side who had been publicly contemplating boycotting the government in the event of a March 8th win. In all cases, Nasrallah mused, Hizbullah is not even that interested in getting involved in the cabinet, and would be happy if its allies in the opposition were to occupy its share of seats, leaving the Hizb to manage the resistance.

Translation? Hizbullah would like to avoid a Hamas-style coming out party at all costs, in the event of a March 8th win. They would like, more than anything else, to go back to the old arrangement: we’ll mind our business if you mind yours.

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The editorial in today’s Daily Star discusses Interior Minister Ziad Baroud’s order authorizing “personnel at his ministry to grant any request to have confessional identity removed from one’s official file at civil registries across the country…”

This is a very significant move, yet another feather in the activist minister’s cap. As the editorial goes on to say, it represents “a long-overdue first stage toward meeting a key term of the Taif Accord, which ended Lebanon’s 1975-1990 Civil War: preparing for the abolition of sectarianism.” I support the minister’s initiative and look forward to visiting a civil registry to perform this operation. I’m hoping that it will involve some kind of purification ritual, something akin to wading into a secularist mikveh or swearing on a copy of The Origin of Species, but it will probably just amount to standing around in a smoky waiting room and being told after three hours to come back the next day. For once in my life, I probably won’t mind.

Just to play devil’s advocate, though, let’s compare this initiative to a similar one that surfaced a few years ago to create a “nineteenth sect”, namely the non-sectarian sect. The idea was that people who did not identify with their particular sect could join this one, and eventually, over time, their numbers would grow to the point that they could begin to demand proportional representation for their “non-sectarian sect” within the government.

At the time, my problem with the 19th-sect initiative was that it seemed to further entrench the sectarian model by virtue of the fact that it did not propose abolishing it altogether, but rather creating one more fish in a sea of confessional identities. Upon reflection, however, I don’t really see how the no-sect initiative is actually different. It creates a 19th category, just like the 19th-sect initiative, which will raise the same questions and concerns, for example:

1. How will a member of either the 19th sect or the zero sect (let’s call them 19′ers and 0′ers) aspire to any governmental or municipal position that is traditionally given to a member of a particular sect? How will they be able to run for parliament, when the Ta’if Accord says nothing about 19′ers or 0′ers?

2. What is the legal status associated with the act of leaving one’s sect, from the perspective of religious law? I think it is perfectly straightforward to make the argument that removing one’s confessional identity from an official file does not amount to renouncing one’s faith, however I can also imagine that many people would be uneasy about doing so without an explicit statement along these lines from a religious authority. What interest would such an authority have, however, in making such a statement if it meant that people would drop their sectarian affiliation?

3. What happens if the people who choose to join the 19′ers or 0′ers come disproportionally from one sect? In other words, if 300,000 people decide to become 19′ers or 0′ers and the vast majority of them are Greek Orthodox or Shiite, this will tip the confessional balance of the country, raising questions about the proportional distribution of governmental positions.

4. I know what you’re thinking… people are already raising questions about the proportional distribution of governmental positions, and with good reason. The best estimates put the Shiites in Lebanon at around 40%, while they hold only 21% of parliament seats. Meanwhile, Christians probably represent around 30% of the population, while holding 50% of the seats. This leads us to our final problem, which derives from the first and the third. If 19′ers/0′ers accumulate enough numbers to the point where they can start making an argument from proportionality to be included in the government, what is to prevent anyone else from making the same argument?  In other words, if we’re going to start counting, then let’s count everybody.

The simple conclusion to be drawn from all of this — and I don’t doubt that Minister Baroud, like many others, has already thought dozens of steps beyond it — is that while such initiatives are good first steps, they will not suffice. Their chief virtue is to nudge the country in the direction of a precipice, but many more reforms and insititutional mechanisms will be needed in order to make the leap of faith. As we saw in the case of General Michel Aoun — who returned to Lebanon in 2005 as a champion of secularism, and then returned from Syria in 2008 as the leader of the Eastern Christians — sectarianism is so deeply ingrained our society that even the most fervent secularists have to wear their sectarian affiliations on their sleeves to survive in Lebanese politics.

View from a ’72 Benz C250 series, issue no. 3

Last night, I took a taxi from Gemmayze to Hamra. The driver seemed to be in his 40′s, and he wore a smart felt cap and a wool sweater vest. A little wooden cross dangled from the rearview mirror. As we drove past the tens of thousands of chairs laid out in Martyrs’ Square for the big Hariri commemoration to be held tomorrow, I launched into my standard conversation starter:  So how’s the political situation these days? You see, I’m visiting from out of town…  Yes, I live abroad…  Just visiting! Seems like things are getting better. No? Do tell…

That usually works. Sometimes I get a taciturn guy who needs to be cajoled into talking, but sometimes I get a real talker, a veritable radio host like this fellow.

“So how’s the political situation these days? You see I’m…”

“The situation is very difficult to read. Very difficult. In the south, there is no contest, as Hizbullah and Amal will take everything. In Beirut 2 and 3, Hariri will triumph again. Same with Tripoli. Any differences between Safadi and Hariri will be settled in advance of the elections, and deals will be cut to ensure that Tripoli remains in the March 14th camp. The only place where you’ll see some contests is in the Mountain. For example, in Jbeil there will be bone-breaking. In Batroun there will be bone-breaking. In Keserwan Aoun is very strong, but if Michel al-Murr and the Armenians form an alliance with Sheikh Amine, then there will be bone-breaking. So you see, the election will come down to a few Christian seats.”

“Whose chances do you like most?”

“I personally think that Aoun’s going to lose. Don’t get me wrong, I used to like Aoun. I liked him during the war, I liked him when he was in Paris, and I liked him when he first returned to Lebanon. But then we discovered that he came back after making a deal with the Syrians. So how can I like him anymore? He is working for Syria and Iran. I mean, in all honesty, oh General, aren’t you ashamed?”

“So I take it you’re not going to vote for him.”

“No. And I don’t think he will win. A lot of Christians have changed their mind about him.”

“Where do you vote?”

“In Achrafieh.”

“So your vote will actually make a difference.”

“Yes, there will be much bone-breaking in Achrafieh.”