December 22, 2011

The Orthodox-Maronite Gathering (OMG) Proposal: Proportional Representation Meets Sectarian Nomination

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Elections, Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14, Reform | Tags: , , , , , , |
[36] Comments 

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…

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November 30, 2011

Mikati Squares the STL Circle

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14 | Tags: , , |
[120] Comments 

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:

  1. We don’t know what kind of deal Mr. Mikati cut with his cabinet partners in order to prevent their resignation;
  2. We don’t know if funding the STL in exchange for valuable concessions was the hidden agenda of the Aounist bloc and Hizbullah all along, or if they decided on this path as a result of more recent developments (like Jumblatt’s defection, the situation in Syria, etc.);
  3. We don’t know if a vote will be required in the cabinet or in parliament to “approve” the funding. Apparently, Mikati transferred the money from the premiership’s own budget, so maybe there will be no need for a vote. This strikes me as a very dicey precedent.

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.

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November 25, 2011

Lebanon’s Latest Game of Chicken: Who Will Resign First?

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14 | Tags: , , |
[86] Comments 

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.
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November 23, 2011

Hizbullah, Mikati, and the STL Funding Showdown

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14, Syria | Tags: , , , , |
[18] Comments 

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.]
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September 7, 2011

Wikileaks Sheds Light on Origins of Aoun’s Alliance With Hizbullah

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14, Syria | Tags: |
[48] Comments 

Apologies for the brief hiatus in blogging. I’ve just returned from a trip to Beirut, arriving just in time for the start of the academic semester here, so things are quite busy. I’ll try to do some catch-up over the next few days, but in the meantime, here’s a brief comment on a couple items from the latest Wikileaks cable dump.

Some of you will recall our discussion of Michel Aoun’s return to Lebanon in 2005, as recounted in Karim Pakradouni’s book Sadma wa-Sumud. Pakradouni claimed that Aoun cut a deal with the Syrians, whereby he could come back to Lebanon provided that he did not call for Emile Lahoud’s impeachment or the disarmament of Hizbullah. Naturally, Aoun has denied this story and Pakradouni later recanted it.

We may never know exactly what the terms of the agreement were, but two diplomatic cables from 2005 shed a little bit of light on Aoun’s transformation from a fire-breathing, Hizbullah-disarming, UNSCR 1559-championing anti-Syrian oppositionist to a fire-breathing, Hizbullah-championing, UNSCR 1559-decrying pro-Syrian power-broker.

On March 21 2005, one week after the landmark million-strong rally in downtown Beirut, Aoun met with the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Paris to offer some thoughts about the situation in Lebanon. Here’s the gist of what he had to say:

  • I represent the true opposition to Syria in Lebanon. I helped bring about the Syria Accountability Act and I was the only Lebanese politician to publicly support UNSCR 1559. The current members of the opposition are still afraid of Syria after 30 years of “hostage mentality”. They need time to become fully liberated.
  • Hizbullah needs to be disarmed. There are no grounds for maintaining its militia, and the pretext of Shebaa is ridiculous. However, the best way to disarm the party is through negotiation and soft power rather than full-on confrontation. If the US can give some guarantees that Hizbullah officials will not continue to be targeted by US courts, then Nasrallah may be willing to deal on military issues.
  • Syria’s regime will fall after it withdraws from Lebanon. It will probably be replaced with a majority Sunni government, and this will dramatically impact Hizbullah’s power in Lebanon.

A month and a half later, Aoun met with the US Chargé d’affaires three days before his return to Lebanon. The content of their conversation was similar to the previous discussion with the DCM, but there were a few key differences:

  • The current March 14 opposition has rebuffed my appeals to join them in an electoral alliance. They are trying to prevent me from returning to Lebanon, and so there’s no way for me to work with them. So unfair! I hate them!
  • Hizbullah, on the other hand, is an honest and reasonable party and so I’ve decided to ally with it. BFF!
  • I’ve come to an agreement with Lahoud allowing me to return to Lebanon (but I’m not going to divulge the details of that agreement).

We might conjecture, therefore, that the period between March 21 and May 4 2005 was critical to the post-Hariri-assassination history of Lebanon. Had the anti-Syrian opposition made room for Aoun, things might have developed in a very different way than they did.

On the other hand, we know that contacts between Aoun and the Syrians had begun long before these conversations even took place. Aoun sent an envoy to Damascus in January 2005 to discuss a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the relations between the two countries. What seems most likely to me is that the Assad regime was looking for a way to bring Aoun back to Lebanon as an ally, in order to provide a counterweight to the political opposition that was coalescing in advance of the 2005 elections.

Rafiq al-Hariri knew all about Aoun’s maneuvers and probably guessed what the Syrians were up to, which was why he devoted so much time in his discussion with Walid al-Muallim attacking the “radical Christians” and pretending like he had nothing to do with 1559. If the Syrians did in fact take the decision to kill Hariri, it would have been because they had lost faith in their ability to control him, whereas Aoun, ironically, seemed like someone they could work with.

Anyway, food for thought…
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June 15, 2011

Mikati’s Cabinet and the 2013 Elections

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Elections, Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14, My articles | Tags: , |
[89] Comments 

I’ve written a brief essay for Foreign Policy about the challenges facing the Mikati government, which you can read here. There are a couple of other observations I’d like to make that are too Lebanon-wonky for FP’s audience but may be of interest to regular readers of QN:

Veto politics: Najib Mikati has made a point of saying that while the March 8 coalition holds a majority in his cabinet, they don’t hold a two-thirds-plus-one supermajority. Out of thirty ministers, only eighteen belong to the FPM, Hizbulah, Amal, and their allies, while the remaining twelve are divided among the shares of Mikati, President Suleiman, and Walid Jumblatt. Is it an accident that Jumblatt’s share is just big enough (i.e. three ministers) to give March 8 a supermajority of twenty-one, if push comes to shove? Once again, Jumblatt makes sure he’s the man in the middle.

FPM: Mikati’s cabinet is already being labeled a “Hizbullah government”. This, to my mind, is an oversimplification, given that Hizbullah only holds two ministries (and insignificant ones at that). Of course, cynics will scoff and say that the Hizb doesn’t need ministries to exert its dominance over the cabinet, and that may well be true. But if they don’t need ministries to dominate a cabinet, then what makes the dynamic in this cabinet different from every other time they have held two or three insignificant ministries?

To my mind, what really makes this cabinet different is the considerable haul that the Free Patriotic Movement and its allies in the Change & Reform Bloc were able to net. Think about it: Defense, Justice, Telecoms, Energy, Labor, Tourism, Industry, Culture, plus a couple freebie ministers without portfolio. That’s tremendous, no matter how you spin it. The Aounist movement has never held that kind of power, and you can bet that they are not going to squander this opportunity to consolidate their position and win more supporters. (See here for my profile of the FPM, which dates back to just before the 2009 elections, but in certain ways remains very relevant to the situation the party finds itself in today).

The 2013 elections: The fact that Tripoli has several of her most prominent sons represented in this cabinet has not been lost on anyone. Mikati is clearly making a play to boost his profile as the most popular political figure in Tripoli, which is the first step toward challenging Saad Hariri’s claim to uncontested leadership of Lebanon’s Sunnis. When Mikati was first appointed back in January, he appeared on Marcel Ghanem’s show Kalam al-Nas, and was asked by the host about what he had to say regarding Hariri’s claims that Mikati did not represent the Sunnis. Mikati, who is usually very cool under pressure, exploded into a comical tirade of sectarian one-upsmanship (click here for the YouTube video in Arabic; English translation below):

Mikati: “I don’t accept anyone to question my Sunnism. If there’s a Sunni in Lebanon, it’s me. I won’t accept it! And those who want to hand out certificates (of Sunnism) can go do it on their own. I’m Sunni in belief, Sunni in practice, Sunni in politics, and I’m the number one defender of the Sunnis in Lebanon. If you want to talk about Sunnis, I’m the one with the highest number of Sunni votes. In the ballot boxes of Tripoli, 87% of the Sunnis voted for Najib Miqati, which has never happened in the history of elections in Lebanon. So [whoever is questioning my Sunnism] can get lost, with all my respect for the muftis and who else is concerned with this issue. I’m the number one Sunni in Lebanon!”

Marcel Ghanem: Great. Moving on…

That always cracks me up. I see great potential for some sort of party game…

It should also be noted that the FPM appointed two ministers (Nicholas Sehnaoui and Gabi Layyoun) from tough electoral districts that they lost in the last elections (Achrafieh and Zahle, respectively).

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June 13, 2011

Lebanon’s New Government

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Elections, Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14 | Tags: , |
[104] Comments 

Najib Miqati and Michel Aoun are, as of today, the two most important men in Lebanese politics (for now).

Four and a half months after Hizbullah and its allies dumped Saad al-Hariri’s fractious national unity government, Lebanon finally has a new one. It is led by Prime Minister Najib Miqati and is composed of parties from the political coalition known as “March 8th” which includes Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, Hizbullah, and Amal. It also includes a number of “independents” from Walid Jumblatt’s PSP, and a few ministers allied with President Suleiman and Prime Minister Miqati.

As anticipated, the biggest winner today is Michel Aoun. Having spent 15 years in the political wilderness, he returned to Lebanon in 2005 from his Parisian exile to find Saad al-Hariri and Walid Jumblatt rebuffing his demands for a seat at the big kids’ table. Aoun sat out Saniora’s government and then endured the disappointment of the 2009 elections, which failed to deliver the parliamentary majority he seemed intent on getting. Two years later, he finally gets to play the role of the political heavyweight in a Lebanese cabinet.

A few notes on the new cabinet (via the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, thanks Richard):

It is noteworthy that there are no women in the proposed cabinet. Five Ministers are reappointed to their previous positions. Two Ministers have moved portfolios. While a number of the new members of the cabinet have held ministerial positions in previous cabinets, this cabinet includes a high proportion of new members. Media reports indicate that Talal Arslan has already declined his participation in the Cabinet. In line with the Constitution, (Article 64.2), the proposed Cabinet now has 30 days to prepare and present its proposed Policy Statement to the Chamber of Deputies. If the Policy Statement gains the approval of a majority of the 128 Deputies, the Government will be formed. If not, then the Prime Minister may choose to resign, or may seek to nominate a new Cabinet, or may seek to nominate the same Cabinet but propose a new Policy Statement.

There’s much more to say about this new dynamic which we’ll be exploring here at Qifa Nabki over the next couple days, but in the meantime, here’s the list of ministers (click here for a downloadable copy):

Cabinet line-up:

Prime Minister: Najib Mikati (Sunni)

Deputy Prime Minister: Samir Moqbel (Orthodox)

President’s share:

Interior: Marwan Charbel (Maronite, also considered close to the Free Patriotic Movement)

Environment: Nazem al-Khoury (Maronite)

Prime Minister’s share:

Finance: Mohammad Safadi (Sunni) Moved from Economy

Economy: Nicolas Nahhas (Orthodox)

Education: Hassan Diab (Sunni)

Information: Walid Daouq (Sunni)

State: Ahmad Karami (Sunni)

Change and Reform bloc:

Justice: Shakib Qortbawi (Maronite, Free Patriotic Movement)

Labor: Charbel Nahhas (Catholic, Free Patriotic Movement) Moved from Telecommunications

Tourism: Fadi Abboud (Maronite, Free Patriotic Movement) Reappointed

Energy and Water: Gebran Bassil (Maronite, Free Patriotic Movement) Reappointed

Telecommunications: Nicolas Sehnaoui (Orthodox, Free Patriotic Movement)

Culture: Gaby Layoun (Catholic, Free Patriotic Movement)

Defense: Fayez Ghosn (Orthodox, Marada Movement)

State: Salim Karam (Maronite, Marada Movement)

State: Panos Manajian (Armenian Orthodox, Tashnaq Party)

Industry: Freije Sabounjian (Armenian Orthodox, Tashnaq Party)

Progressive Socialist Party:

Public Works and Transportation: Ghazi Aridi (Druze) Reappointed

Social Affairs: Wael Abu Faour (Druze) Moved from State

The Displaced: Alaeddine Terro (Sunni)

Hezbollah:

Administrative Reform: Mohammad Fneish (Shia) Reappointed

Agriculture: Hussein Hajj Hassan (Shia) Reappointed

Youth and Sports: Faisal Karami (Sunni)

Amal:

Foreign Affairs: Adnan Mansour (Shia)

Public Health: Ali Hassan Khalil (Shia)

Lebanese Democratic Party:

State: Talal Arslan (Druze) [The latest reports say that Arslan is refusing to join the government.]

Independents:

State for Parliament Affairs: Nicolas Fattouch (Catholic)

SSNP:

State: Ali Qanso (Shia, Syrian Social Nationalist Party)

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May 29, 2011

Lebanon’s Political Honeypot: What’s Behind the Telecoms Spat

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
[414] Comments 

The following commentary is by a well-informed reader of this blog who goes by the pseudonym “Charles”. He was one of the authors of the excellent Lebanese Political Journal blog (largely defunct since about 2007, but a must-read during the post-Hariri assassination years), and his intervention provides some much-needed context on the larger issues behind the telecoms showdown in Lebanon.

Reader Commentary by “Charles”

It appears that the basic problem is a lack of state accountability. Two oligarchic factions are standing off against one another.

The discussion to privatize Ogero goes back to the days of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri (and Finance Minister Fouad Siniora) who had the political and economic clout to privatize Ogero and make it his own. From 2003-4, the Syrians severely limited Hariri’s privatizations, which resulted in Moody’s downgrading Lebanon’s bond rating, as the government was not following its own debt restructuring program according to the guidelines set out in Paris II, which included promises to privatize the telecommunications network, the electrical grid, MEA, amongst other things.

Of course, the re-election of Lahoud and the removal of Hariri put everything else on hold, but Hariri’s men remained in their positions in the ministries waiting for their leader to return to power. Omar Karami’s (and Finance Minister Elias Saliba’s) failures alongside Syrian heavy handedness almost guaranteed Hariri’s return to power and a return to privatizations.

When M14 won the 2005 elections and then negotiated Paris III, the privatizations were supposed to continue, but did not because of opposition from Jumblatt, Berri, and Hezbollah, who humiliated Hariri and Siniora by rudely making their opposition to privatization known during the PM and Finance Minister’s meetings in New York and DC (something we saw them do once again to topple Hariri’s gov’t in 2011).

The telecoms privatization continued to fester under Marwan Hamade who, despite his affiliation with the March 14th coalition (M14), also had problems with Abdel Monem Youssef who was still waiting to become the director of the newly privatized Ogero and make his millions. The M14 appointed and affiliated director of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) Kamal Shehadeh had major problems with both Hamade and Youssef.

The transfer of telecoms to Gebran Bassile was a remarkably intelligent move by Michel Aoun. Without a financial power base of his own, Aoun needed a source of wealth to finance his politics, and he went to the same sources of money that finance a huge portion of Lebanese government operating costs: (1) foreign backers; (2) and the government owned telecommunications networks that allow Lebanese to do what we do best: talk on cell phones.

Since then, both specific interests within the Future Movement (not the entire party, and definitely not all of M14) and specific interests within the FPM (not the entire party, and definitely not all of the March 8th coalition [M8]) have determined the debate over telecommunications. This debate went from being nasty under Gebran Bassile to being an all out war under Charbel Nahhas, under whose tenure the esteemed technocratic TRA head Shehadeh resigned in disgust (Shehadeh’s personality and political disposition is remarkably similar to Ziad Baroud).

Hariri/Siniora provide political backing and will reap the profit; Rifi provides enforcement; and Youssef holds the fort. Aoun/Bassile provide the political backing and will reap the profit; Nahhas, OTV, and the ISF Embassy division (this division swears allegiance to the FPM?) provides the enforcement; and Aoun holds the fort through tedious negotiations over cabinet formations.

In the mean time, Hezbollah established their own network, thus by-passing the squabbling over privatizations, making millions (if not billions) using its own telecommunications network, weakened the Lebanese government through depriving it of one of its greatest sources of revenue (receipts from telecommunications traffic), provided cheaper and better communications for its partisans and others, and defending its own interests with its weapons.

Sure, there is espionage stuff going on – which Future, the FPM, Hezbollah, Israel, etc. like to play up because once it is brought up Lebanese brains stop behaving rationally, but its really about who reaps the spoils from the biggest honey pot in the country.

The current squabble is over the privatization of Ogero and the possible creation of a third mobile network. Aoun and Bassile refused to play the Lebanese political game in which they would have made a deal with Hariri and received a cut (Lebanon’s system of creating consensus), and have been trying to take the candy away from Hariri/Youssef for years. Nahhas has been the most effective at dismantling the Hariri/Youssef network, which is why the relationship between the two factions has become so nasty. They don’t understand why Aoun isn’t playing by the corrupt rules of Lebanese politics with them, even though he does with almost every other faction.

Youssef hunkering down created a stalemate to be resolved in the future. Nahhas is trying to resolve the situation now, because…

Enter Najib Miqati, and the situation becomes an emergency for both FM and FPM, which is why they are behaving so badly at this precise moment. The Miqati billions were created through telecommunications. Taha Miqati was a small time construction contractor in Khaleej until he established his satellite communications up link, which created enough profit for the Miqati brothers to make their billions. Their business relationships with the Assad regime (and more specifically with Rami Makhlouf) involve telecommunications.

If Miqati gets the telecoms portfolio in the next government, Hariri will cut a deal and Youssef will get his pay out (and he’s been waiting a long, long time). Aoun and Bassile get screwed. However, Hariri has a much worse hand with which to negotiate if Youssef doesn’t have a full network and doesn’t have a large base of operations that he controls.

Miqati has the political might to privatize the telecoms networks, or at least upgrade them, but he will have to cut deals all around, including with HA, Berri, and Jumblatt. Hariri is in a much better position if Youssef is in a dominant position. Youssef can throw a wrench in the works of any future privatization deal.

Nahhas technically had the right to take his action with the equipment, but the FPM isn’t following the “no victor, no vanquished” consensus model of Lebanese politics. They made it personal, and Future is responding in a surprisingly immature manner given how much they have to lose in this.
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May 27, 2011

Coup-Coup in Lebanon: Minister Baroud Resigns Over Telecoms-ISF Showdown

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon, March 14 | Tags: , , , , , |
[91] Comments 

I've been wanting to do this for a long time...

Lebanese Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud resigned yesterday following a bizarre showdown involving two different branches of the Internal Security Forces, Minister of Telecommunications Charbel Nahhas, and Baroud himself.

March 14 is calling it a Telecoms Ministry-launched coup against the executive branch of the Lebanese government; March 8th is calling it an ISF-launched coup against the state. Who’s right?

There are many conflicting accounts of what actually took place (see here for a translated round-up of the Arabic press’s lead stories) but the basic chronology seems to be as follows:

  1. Nahhas (who is a member of the Free Patriotic Movement’s cabinet bloc and a staunch ally of Michel Aoun) sent a team to dismantle some equipment housed in a building affiliated with the Telecommunications Ministry.
  2. Ashraf Rifi, general of the Internal Security Forces, sent a large group of policemen to secure the building and prevent the telecommunications team from accessing the equipment.
  3. Nahhas then sent a letter to Ziyad Baroud, asking him to order Rifi to have his men stand down. (Technically, Rifi reports to Baroud, as the ISF is under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry).
  4. Baroud did so, and Rifi ignored him, arguing that his orders came from a superior authority (more on that later).
  5. Nahhas also somehow managed to get a second branch of the ISF that is responsible for embassy protection (see here for the ISF website) to accompany him to the building where he tried to access the equipment himself.
  6. Rifi’s men prevailed, but not before the entire sad spectacle was caught on television: two branches of the same police force staring each other down, with one minister prevented from accessing a building connected with his own ministry and another minister issuing orders to his subordinates to no avail.

I’ve been in touch with government officials and other political insiders since yesterday evening, trying to piece together the factors that led to this showdown and to assess the fallout. Here are some preliminary observations:

The first questions that spring to mind, of course, are: (1) what was this mysterious equipment that Nahhas was prevented from accessing? (2) on whose authority did Rifi cordon off the building and ignore Baroud’s orders? On these issues, al-Akhbar provides some help background. It seems that the telecommunications equipment was a gift from the Chinese government in 2007. The Saniora government licensed Ogero (the state-owned company that is responsible for maintaining the telecommunications infrastructure and which has had a deeply antagonistic relationship with the current Telecoms minister) to set up a third telecommunications network in Lebanon. Why they chose to do so at that time remains unclear, but Rifi claimed to have been operating under the executive order of Saniora’s government when he disregarded the orders of Baroud to allow Nahhas access to the equipment.

It is highly ironic (as Mustapha at Beirut Spring astutely pointed out yesterday) that the ordered dismantling of a telecommunications network should again provide the spark for a tense confrontation between Lebanon’s two political blocs. When the Saniora government attempted to pull the same trick on Hizbullah in 2008, we all recall what happened.

As far as the political fallout is concerned, Nahhas and Michel Aoun look like the clear winners here. Ashraf Rifi has long been accused by March 8 politicians of running the ISF like a March 14th militia accountable only to Saad al-Hariri. Baroud’s resignation makes that reading very attractive to many Lebanese who are uncomfortable with the idea of a military officer ignoring the directives of perhaps the most popular civilian leader in the country (i.e. Baroud).

It should also be pointed out that Baroud (a friend of this blog whom I admire a great deal) has long been unhappy in his position at the Interior Ministry. His freedom of movement has been severely curtailed and he has had virtually no authority over many of the security-related fiefdoms that he is supposed to oversee. He has supposedly come very close to resigning on multiple occasions, but was likely prevented from doing so by President Suleiman, who needed a trustworthy ally in this all-important ministry. Yesterday’s events, however, were too egregious for Baroud to ignore. My personal feeling is that he made the right move.

More info will be posted as it becomes available…
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May 20, 2011

Lebanese Stalemate: The Syria Theory

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14, Syria | Tags: , , , |
[58] Comments 

I have tried to resist viewing the current stalemate in Lebanon’s cabinet formation as the product of Syrian meddling. After all, there are  more than enough local obstacles in Lebanon for Syria to bother getting its hands dirty. Some of these obstacles include:

The longer this stalemate continues, however, the more I begin to suspect a Syrian dimension to Aoun’s stalling tactics. When virtually every other member of the March 8 coalition has expressed their support for Najib Miqati and their satisfaction with his efforts to form a cabinet, Aoun is the only one who has consistently put up a fight and threatened to withdraw his support for Miqati’s candidacy (besides, of course, Wi’am Wahhab…)

The question is: why would Syria have an interest in preventing the formation of a government by its own allies in Beirut? The past four months have made Hizbullah, Amal, and the FPM look completely hapless. The only conceivable reason for putting the brakes on would be to spare a “Hizbullah-led” government from being painted as an accomplice to Syria’s crackdown on its protesters.

Let’s imagine that Miqati succeeds in forming the government tomorrow, and let’s also imagine that the protests in Syria escalate over the next several weeks to the point where the regime has to launch a major security operation, killing hundreds more people and sending thousands of refugees (including many opposition activists) streaming across the border. If a March 8 government in Lebanon denies asylum to the Syrian opposition (which is a safe bet), Hizbullah and its allies would become easy targets for March 14th’s media outlets. Saad Hariri and co. would not miss a chance to paint the Lebanese government as an extension of the Assad regime, and this could easily galvanize enormous protests in Lebanon in support of the Syrian people.

That would be a publicity nightmare for Damascus and its Lebanese allies, all of whom came out in strong support of the populist movements in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain.  So perhaps the current state of affairs does indeed have foreign fingerprints all over it. If the cabinet is formed the day after Bashar al-Assad declares victory over the Syrian opposition, we may know for sure…

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