On Friday, June 16th, Lebanon quietly ended one of the longest stretches
of government paralysis in post-Second World War history. The parliament
met to ratify a new electoral law that will govern national elections
next year, nearly a decade after the last parliamentary polls were held.
The law’s proponents claim that it will improve representation for the
many sects that compose the country’s religiously diverse population.
They say it also addresses demands by civil-society groups who have
railed against the propensity of the political élite to pass power down
through the generations and keep reformists at bay. In Beirut, there is
both cynicism and optimism about what the new law might deliver. Mostly,
though, one senses an uncertainty about the future—a familiar enough
feeling in a country that endured a brutal, fifteen-year civil war, but
unfamiliar in other ways. There is a genuine wondering-aloud as to
whether a new chapter in Lebanon’s history might be about to begin, and
some hope that a political system built on the principle of fostering
coexistence might be insulated from a region wracked by sectarianism.
Since the onset of the Arab Spring, in early 2011, Lebanese politics
have been gridlocked. Unlike in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, no
street demonstrations emerged calling for the fall of the regime. Yet
Lebanon’s weak central government struggled to hold itself together.
Parliamentary elections were cancelled in 2013, after the country’s main
political forces were unable to agree on which side to back in the
Syrian civil war, on the election of the next Lebanese President, and on
the country’s support for the U.N. Special Tribunal investigating the
2005 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The
current parliament has used dubious pretexts to extend its term three
times, all while failing to address deep crises in the provision of
basic public services, from electricity to waste disposal. As a result,
public trust in the government’s legitimacy is at the lowest point since
the early aughts, when Syria’s government still controlled Lebanon.
Numerous dynamics feed the paralysis, but at its heart is a debate about
the viability of Lebanon’s consociational government, which distributes
power among the country’s religious communities. Seats in parliament are
split evenly between Christians and Muslims, and the main offices of
President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of Parliament are reserved for
Maronite Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites, respectively. This arrangement
has been in place, in one shape or another, since Lebanon’s
independence, in 1943, even though the consensual decision-making that
it engenders is notoriously inefficient and prone to destabilization. In
short, it enables any one stakeholder to easily play spoiler.
The question of how to hold an election under such a system has
bedeviled Lebanese politics for decades, but the past few years have
witnessed a particularly engaged bout of soul-searching. Ramez Dagher,
the author of a well-known political blog called Moulahazat, recently wrote that it has taken “two Presidents, four Prime Ministers, five
[cabinets] and at least twenty different possible draft electoral
laws” to arrive at the solution finally approved in parliament earlier
this month. At stake was not only the problem of how to share power
among the traditional representatives of Lebanon’s religious communities
but also how to facilitate the emergence of nonsectarian political
parties, a core demand of Lebanon’s increasingly activist civil society.
The new electoral law adopts a system of proportional representation for
the first time in Lebanese history, replacing the majoritarian principle
that has governed the country’s elections since independence. Rather
than facing off in a winner-takes-all contest, parties competing in a
given district will be awarded seats according to the proportion of the
vote that they win. In theory, this system will clear the way for
independent candidates outside the traditional political class to gain a
foothold. The new threshold for winning a seat is substantially lower
than in previous elections, creating opportunities for reformers with
little political experience to enter parliament.
If independent candidates do decide to test the waters in next year’s
election, they will likely push a message of change and reform to a
public that is desperate for better governance. George Ajjan, a
Beirut-based political strategist, told me that insurgent parties will
need to structure their campaigns “around key issues like electricity
provision, waste disposal, health, education, and jobs.”
There are economic incentives for politicians to bury the hatchet.
Lebanon is eager to exploit the potentially vast natural-gas fields off
its coast, joining initiatives already under way in Israel, Cyprus, and
Egypt. And an enormous backlog of legislative issues awaits attention,
including increasing public-sector pay and overhauling the electricity
sector. The Lebanese government’s sclerosis has also slowed the flow of
international aid for refugees. Support from the World Bank, for
instance, is contingent on the government passing a budget.
Civil-society leaders, however, seem unimpressed by the law, citing the
lack of quotas for female candidates, the lax campaign-financing
regulations, and the absence of an independent commission to supervise
the elections. “It’s akin to putting new tires on an old car,” one
longtime observer of Lebanese elections told me. “New tires are useful
when it’s a beloved classic car that speeds along, but essentially
pointless when the car is a dysfunctional old banger.”
Critics also point out that the new law redraws electoral districts in
an overly sectarian fashion, insuring that parliamentarians are elected
mainly by their own co-religionists, rather than by voters from
different sects. Lebanon’s Christian parties have long complained that
previous electoral laws required many Christian members of parliament to
be elected by Muslim majorities, a demographic reality in a country
where Christians no longer represent half the population. Meanwhile,
Sunni and Shiite candidates won elections in districts dominated by
members of their own sects.
Under the new system, the two largest Christian parties in Lebanon—the Free
Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces—worked with the architects of
the new law to create an electoral map that greatly increases the number
of Christians elected primarily by Christians. To most secularists, this
new scheme smacks of an entrenchment of sectarianism, rewarding
candidates for catering to their own religious communities rather than
trying to appeal to a more diverse electorate.
Alain Aoun, a member of parliament from the predominantly Christian Free
Patriotic Movement, disagreed, and said that the new system “lessens
sectarian tensions, which usually stem from a feeling of injustice in
the representation of certain communities.” He argued that Christian
voters are more likely to vote for candidates on the basis of their
policy platform rather than their sectarian identity if they don’t fear
that their representatives in parliament will be chosen predominantly by
members of another sect.
Dr. Basem Shabb, a member of parliament allied to the mainly Sunni
Future Movement, who holds a seat reserved for Protestants, told me that a deep sense of
vulnerability across all the country’s groups forced its political
factions to finally agree to the law: “All the sects have existential
issues as well as electoral ones,” he said. “The Shiites are isolated.
The Druzes want a guarantee that they are properly represented. Even the
Sunnis feel targeted because of what’s happening in Syria and Iraq. And,
of course, the Christians have their concerns.”
Surprisingly, that sense of shared vulnerability has created a renewed,
if wearied, spirit of local collaboration. Rather than expecting
regional politics to change the status quo in Lebanon, as many factions
have done for many years, local parties have decided to make their peace
at the Lebanese negotiating table, even if next year’s election could
threaten their hold on the country’s governance. “The players have not
yet digested the rules of the new game,” Shabb told me. “Of course,
they’re going to go back and run statistics and numbers and figure out
what they want to do. But I think it’s going to be a surprise.”