March 14th launched its electoral campaign on March 14th with a big convention in which the coalition’s 14 leaders unveiled the 14 points of their electoral program.
This was preceded by a spectacular circus act in which 14 jugglers rode around on 14-foot tall unicycles juggling 14 flaming cedar branches while Sami Gemayel’s gnarley math rock band Tetradecagon lit it up.
For those of you who have not yet had the chance to read March 14th’s epoch-making Fourteen Points (which make Woodrow Wilson’s look like a grocery list) then be sure to check them out. They are inspiring as hell. I’ve summarized them below.
1. Avoid getting destroyed by Israel.
2. Strip Hizbullah of its weapons.
3. Continue to fight Syria while pretending we are kissing and making up.
4. Don’t piss off the international community by losing the election and allowing Hizbullah to come to power.
5. Reassure the Arab world that we don’t really think we’re not Arab, even if we sometimes joke about it.
6. Remind our “Palestinian brethren” that not even in their wildest dreams will they ever, ever, ever be settled in Lebanon.
7. Build the state and its institutions, perfect our democracy, give equal rights to all, dismantle confessionalism, lower the voting age to 18, create a non-sectarian electoral law, enforce the Ta’if Accord, create a senate, reform state institutions, eliminate corruption, establish administrative decentralization, and fill the world with peace and justice.
8. Make sure Syria is implicated by the International Tribunal.
9. Don’t get steamrolled by the global financial crisis.
10. Create jobs.
11. Save health care, education, and social services, establish basic rights for the citizen, create a social contract, and eliminate poverty.
12. Empower women (by proposing legislation that we will then not vote in favor of, kind of like the Boutros Electoral Law).
13. Cater to the whims of the Lebanese diaspora, because without the annual $7 billion Lebanon gets in remittances, we’d all be toast.
14. Save the environment.
See what I mean? It’s elegant, succinct, to the point. Plus, it concentrates all the really complicated and hard stuff into a couple of clauses, making it easier to jettison later. (“Well, we may not have gotten around to fulfilling #7 or #11, but hey, shoot for the stars, right?”)
How much do you want to bet that the March 8th list (as yet to be unveiled) looks exactly like this, minus a clause here or there?
Qifa Nabki 
looooool qn love the summary.
Posted by adiamondinsunlight | March 17, 2009, 10:42 pmYou joke but apart from Lieberman, not one Israeli list could be summarised in this way.
Posted by netsp | March 18, 2009, 1:41 amAlthough you and I differ in political views (no I am not a March 14er, LF’r, Kataeb…etc)I enjoy your writting and your witt. I do agree with your conclusion and would bet that M8 agenda will only slightly differ from M14. But I would also add that once either or gets the power, the 14, 12, 15… points list will go directly to the dust bin.
Posted by marillionlb | March 18, 2009, 10:04 amnetsp, I’m not sure what you mean.
Posted by Qifa Nabki | March 18, 2009, 2:02 pmmarillonlb
How do you know we differ in political views? 🙂
Posted by Qifa Nabki | March 18, 2009, 2:56 pmI have been visiting your page almost daily for a relatively short time now ( I haven’t had time to read your earlier posts, but I will depending on my work load))that is the impression I got. But then again it wouldn’t be the first time that I am wrong.
Posted by marillionlb | March 18, 2009, 5:34 pmQN – sounds disarmingly correct to me. Not a bad plan.
Posted by Joshua Landis | March 18, 2009, 7:14 pmMichel Aoun and his FMP should loose in the elections: these ideas he’s talking about doesn’t represent the christian point of view.
it’s time for aoun and his partisans to know that they don’t represent christians with their political ideas.
Anyways it’s his responsability, and he should pay the price!! we are in a democratic country, and will be counting on people’s mind behind the curtain.
About christian majority and unity, We should remember that Lebanon was strong when the lebanese kataeb party was strong, and lebanese christians were strong and unified when kataeb party was strong!
It’s time for kataeb party, the “mother party”, to regain popularity and come back to the political life in Lebanon, in order to protect and preserve the christians interests in Lebanon.
14 march alliance will win the coming elections.
Posted by maroun | March 19, 2009, 12:18 pmMaroun,
Lol… I couldn’t stop laughing after reading your comments… the only good thing I can say is that you’re a nostalgic for the old days.
Posted by Nidal | March 19, 2009, 1:54 pmNice job, and the graphic is priceless. I compared their program with the work of the Change and Reform block, as documented in the parliament’s meeting minutes: http://www.lebanesefromabroad.com/Achievements_BCR_english.pdf
I found that March 14 were claiming as a plan, things that the block for change and reform has already proposed as a law: (voting age = 18), or things that contradict their previous votes: they voted against protecting the Lebanese from foreign land developers, and against paying the retroactive raises to state employees. How can they claim to be protective of Lebanese citizens?
What you wrote was great btw, too bad you’re ot an LFPM writer!
Posted by halayc | May 4, 2009, 6:43 am