It was clear, even prior the parliamentary elections this year, that the 1996 parliament would be even worse than that elected in 1992. Initially, however, the challenge seemed particularly difficult to meet: rarely had a Lebanese legislature been as docile as the 1992 parliament; almost never had legislative politics reached such levels of obsequiousness and unanimity. Many may soon begin looking back on the 1992 parliament with some nostalgia, as the 1996 parliament looks ready to reach the outer limits of obeisance and sycophancy.
A local French-language magazine recently chose to describe the new parliament as the "not to be found parliament² (la Chambre introuvable).[1] The reference was to the first parliament established after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815. Louis XVIII, delighted with the loyalty of the body, declared that such a parliament could not be found again. More perniciously, noted the magazine, the new parliament will be hard to find since it is destined to all but disappear from the Lebanese political landscape.
We can, with ease, invent other adjectives to describe the 1996 parliament. It is a parliament with no opposition; a parliament of businessmen and militiamen; a parliament of millionaires; a parliament of settled scores. But most of all, it is a parliament that will most probably have as little regard for institutional sanctity as the 1992 parliament; a parliament that will sell itself as a bastion of pluralism, but will include among its members deputies a majority of whom have shown themselves to be reliable and uncritical allies in the systematic vanishing act that has characterized Lebanese democratic institutions since the Ta'if agreement.
A Parliament with No Opposition
The first thing we can say of the new parliament is that it will have virtually no internal opposition. Of the 128 deputies in parliament, no more than eight can be considered independent opposition figures, and even then this assumes that they will not eventually be co-opted by the government. At the moment, the members of this parliamentary opposition appear to be Nassib Lahoud, Pierre Daccash, Zahir al-Khatib, Camille Ziadeh, Najah Wakim, Salim al-Hoss, Mustapha Sa'd, and perhaps Boutros Harb.
Parliament will be made up of a series of large blocs all of which will have a vested interest in collaborating with the state, and with each other, in order to more effectively divide up the Lebanese pie. The major blocs are roughly the following:
- A Hariri bloc of between 30 and 40 deputies;
- A Birri bloc of between 20 and 25 deputies;
- Two loosely-knit Northern blocs, one of 18 deputies and another of seven deputies;
- A Junblat bloc of seven to ten deputies;
- A Hizballah bloc of nine deputies.
- An Armenian bloc of six deputies;
- A Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) bloc of five deputies;
- A Hrawi bloc of five to six deputies.
Almost none of these major blocs, with the exception, on rare occasions, of Hizballah will challenge the general direction of the government's policies and the relationship with Syria. Indeed, the structure of the Lebanese state today is so overwhelmingly in favor of the government, that any form of opposition may be politically suicidal.
Instead, it appears that given the dynamics of power, Mr. Hariri's bloc will eventually be counterbalanced by Mr. Birri's bloc. This will not imply opposition by Mr. Birri, however, but will only represent a tactical step by the speaker to strengthen his hand in the negotiations between the legislative and executive branches on a more equitable redistribution of state power and resources. At more modest levels, this calculation will also be behind the behavior of other parliamentary blocs.
A Parliament of Money
Conservative estimates reveal that almost half of the members of the 1996 parliament are either businessmen or members of the political class that emerged because of the war. This underlines the extent to which more traditional methods of reaching power, whether belonging to a political family or being a member of one of the major professions, have declined. It also reflects the change in Lebanon's political class since the end of the war, whereby a rising class of politicians has come to power either because of business ties to the political elite or close ties to Syria, or any combination of the two.
The 1996 elections showed that candidates have to be wealthy to reach parliament. One can estimate roughly that almost 85 of the 128 deputies in parliament are independently wealthy or have sources of income other than their salaries as deputies. This reflects several realities: that the cost of campaigning has reached unprecedented levels; that for a sizable number of new deputies politics has become another rung on the ladder of success, a view undoubtedly reinforced by the fate of Mr. Hariri; and that money has become virtually the sole instrument for winning elections, at the expense of political programs and even traditional family ties and patron-client relationships.
If Lebanese politics has come to show how the wealthy can enter power, it has also shown how power can make one wealthy. For many politicians who have no solid base of local support, and even for some who do, political survival has come to depend on benefiting financially from one's time in power. The money earned goes into buying more influence, without which one's power base is under perpetual threat.
It is doubtful whether many members from such a political class will be willing to challenge the government on its major economic initiatives, particularly the tight monetary policies imposed in the past three years. In the end, it is salary earners who a re hardest hit by such policies. Moreover, the poorer the voters, the easier they are to buy, which, for many politicians is a blessing in disguise. In many ways, Lebanon's reconstruction program has become a fountainhead of influence and wealth from whic h the political class, many deputies included, have benefited. Any challenge to Mr. Hariri's policies in parliament may threaten this source of this income.
A Parliament of Settled Scores
One of the singular features of the 1996 elections was the extent to which they were used to settle past political scores. Painfully few are the deputies who survived the retribution demanded early on by members of the political leadership, and Syria, for past affronts.
One need name only some of those against whom, it was widely whispered, a "veto" from above had been imposed: they are Albert Mukhaybir, Michel Samaha, Pierre Helou, Fouad al-Sa'd, Marwan Abou Fadel, Mikhail al-Daher, Habib Sadeq, Isam Na'man, Samir Aoun, Camille Ziadeh, Nassib Lahoud, Boutros Harb, Albert Mansour, Elias Abou Rizq, Najah Wakim, Tammam Salam, Sa'd al-Din Khalid, and others. From this list, only Camille Ziadeh, Nassib Lahoud, Boutros Harb, Najah Wakim, and Tammam Salam succeeded in winning a seat, and even then because they had a measure of support from some of those in power.
There was a clear message in the low victory rate of "vetoed" candidates: namely that political continuity has become far more dependent on one's being on good turns with those in power, particularly all three members of the leadership troika, than on the independent volition of the electorate.
A Less Islamist Parliament
Islamist parties have seen their share of power reduced in the 1996 parliament. Mr. Hariri will undoubtedly seek to underline this point when he meets with Western representatives in the coming weeks and months. This should be qualified, however. Hizballah's share of Shi'a seats fell only from eight to seven, with the real cutback coming in seats belonging to the party's non-Shi'a allies. Moreover, the party gained an extra two seats in the South, which is symbolically highly important given that it is there that the anti-Israeli resistance operates.
The biggest losers among the Islamist parties were the Jama'a Islamiyya and the Ahbash, both, incidentally, parties in strong opposition one to the other. The Ahbash lost their one seat in Beirut when Adnan Traboulsi was defeated; while in the North, the Jama'a lost both the seats it won in 1992, although it gained back a seat in the Akkar where Khaled Daher won. In Sidon, the Jama'a candidate, Ali Shaykh Ammar, lost to Mr. Hariri's sister, Bahiyya.
While it is true to say that Islamist parties have, on balance, lost seats in the new parliament, in reality this means nothing. At no time were the Islamist parties numerous enough to create an effective bloc in parliament, nor for that matter did they tend to vote together. Somehow, the idea that the Lebanese parliament after 1992 would become more Islamist has proved to be a myth. The Islamist parties have played the parliamentary game in the same pragmatic way as other political blocs, and have almost never countered the major policies of the government.
A More Representative Parliament
When all is said and done, the 1996 parliament is the fruit of a voter turnout officially estimated at just over 44%. Indeed the figure is higher given that many of those on the voters lists are either outside the country or have died.[2] This will undoubtedly provide the parliament with international legitimacy, although it was doubtful that this legitimacy would be denied through a low voter turnout as the Paris-based opposition had hoped.
Does a 44% turnout mean that a large share of Lebanese are satisfied with the political system? That is far from certain. Instead, the relatively high level of participation can be explained as a sign that the Lebanese are more than even in need of state-provided services. The real message in the 1996 elections was that pro-government candidates won because they were able to use state services to mobilize voters. It is fair to say that, at present, only the state is able deliver when it comes time to satisfying the needs of most Lebanese. The estimated one million poor in Lebanon [3] make up a large clientele for state services, even if they do not support the government's economic policies. Political support in Lebanon has usually been based on relationships between political patrons and their demanding clients. Today, the state has become the biggest patron for an ever needier clientele.
What of the opposition, or oppositions, then? It must be recognized that only the state, embodied in the person of Mr. Hariri, appears at present to have a program for the future. That Mr. Hariri's programs have been lacking in social consciousness is unfortunate, but irrelevant; the reality is that no opposition has formed which has attempted to garner this dissatisfaction. The call for an election boycott by the Paris-based opposition, for example, was a fiasco, suggesting that Lebanese are looking for more than mere slogans. All oppositions will continue to fail unless they can unite and counter the government with a serious program, an organization, and credible candidates. Until then, the Lebanese will continue to run to those political leaders who feel that every voter has a price.
Footnotes:
[1] See L'Orient-Express, Number 10, September 1996.[2]On the day following the Biqa' election, the interior minister, Michel al- Murr, estimated that voter turnout in the national elections had been in the order of 66%, if one took into consideration only those on voters lists still alive or residing in Lebanon. In his zeal to show that the Lebanese massively participated in the elections, Mr. Murr appeared to have forgotten that one of the reasons cited by the government for delaying municipal elections has been that voters lists have to be updated. The interior minister's services apparently had no difficulty determining how many individuals left the country, a task which would go a long way towards advancing the updating process.
Footnotes[3] See Antoine Haddad's "The Poor in Lebanon,² in the Lebanon Report, Number 2, summer 1996, pp. 34-42.
Lebanon Report Fall 1996 Index | Publications Index