The Lebanon Report
Number 1
Spring 1996
Misreading the Signs:
Parliament and the Second Republic - Michael Young
In the past year, the Lebanese parliament has succeeded in confounding even its most ardent supporters. Rarely has an institution which had succeeded so well in regaining a degree of lost legitimacy, thrown it away so easily through a combination of pressure, weakness and indecision. This transformation is investigated in the two papers in this section, one by Joseph Bahout of the CERMOC, the other by Fares Sassine of the Lebanese University. While Mr. Bahout principally examines the role (and shortcomings) of the legislative branch in the post-Ta'if political structure, Dr. Sassine moves further and draws a preliminary balance sheet of the 1992 parliament.
The Lebanese parliament is the descendant of several representative institutions dating back to the period of the double qa'immaqamiyya, specifically between 1845 and 1860. A notable and continuous feature of all these bodies was that they were established on the basis of a confessional equilibrium. The first united representative council for Mount Lebanon was the Administrative Council of the Mutasarrifiyya. The council had twelve members, but was expanded to fourteen in 1912. As its name indicated, the council carried out largely administrative and fiscal tasks and assisted the Ottoman-appointed governor in carrying out his duties. It was officially dissolved by the Ottoman authorities in 1915 in the midst of World War I. At the end of the war, France took over control of Lebanon and in 1920 the French authorities established a fifteen-member Administrative Commission with largely consultative powers. This was replaced in 1922 by a Representative Council, the first elected council in Lebanon's history. Its powers were mostly administrative, with legislative powers in the hands of the High Commissioner. In 1926, a new constitution was adopted which established an Assembly and a Senate. The following year, however, a constitutional amendment dissolved the Senate and established a parliamentary structure that existed more or less until the Ta'if agreement.
It is the post-Ta'if parliament that will be dealt with here. From a reading of the two papers in this section, four general conclusions can be made about the parliament:
The powers granted to parliament in the Ta'if agreement were principally concentrated in the hands of its speaker. The growing influence of the speaker, in turn, came in a context of a diffusion of power in the Second Republic between the members of the leadership troïka, who were seen as representatives of their respective communities.
The 1992 parliament contains a substantial number of members from the post-war political class. While it is better to defer judgment on the durability of this political class, the parliament can be said to reflect more accurately post-war social and political reality than the previous parliament.
Parliament gradually regained legitimacy in the three years after the 1992 elections by opposing the Hariri government which it had played a key role in bringing to power. Yet this paradox was accompanied by another: parliament, while it could oppose the government, could not, for domestic and regional reasons, remove it from office.
While parliament has been more active than its predecessors, the political initiative in legislation has gradually shifted to the government. This suggests that while parliament has sought to play a serious political role, it has suffered from serious political, financial, and logistical setbacks, whether emanating from within the system or imposed from outside.
Final conclusions about the current parliament are premature, as Farès Sassine remarks. However, there is no doubt that several of the predictions and expectations which greeted the beginning of parliament's mandate have been disappointed. While it seemed that parliament in its first three years had succeeded in regaining a measure of credibility, the extension of President Hrawi's mandate was the turning point which showed parliament's independent power to be a fiction. The initial expectations for parliament became, instead, misconceptions, or misreadings, of the legislature's ability to inject more pluralistic tendencies into the political system. We can highlight some of these misconceptions:
The possibility of an effective parliamentary opposition. At no point in its term has parliament been able to mount a serious challenge to government priorities. On such major initiatives as the Horizon 2000 reconstruction program, regulation of the audio-visual media, the government's budget proposals, or the extension of President Hrawi's mandate, parliament was unable to significantly challenge the government's proposals. In large part, this was due to Œred lines' imposed by Syria and the so-called
"imperatives"of national stability. Whatever the reason, the ability of parliament to present an alternative field of political action to that of the government was shown to be an illusion. Similarly, within parliament an opposition remains weak, though spirited, and has coalesced around a mere handful of deputies. These deputies, however, have rarely been able to do more than make minor amendments to government draft laws, often with little impact on their implementation.
Avoidance of parliament. While an effective parliamentary opposition never appeared possible, an extra-parliamentary opposition has also never formed which could create an independent field of political activity that could marginalize the legislature. That is why most opposition figures appear to be impatiently awaiting this year's parliamentary elections, and may well participate whichever electoral law is passed. The irony of this is that many opposition parties or politicians have come to rely on their future participation in parliament to buttress their own increasingly weak positions, even if by entering it they both may neutralize themselves and legitimize a system they have for so long rejected.
The Islamist juggernaut. One of the most original aspects of the 1992 parliament when its term began was the presence of deputies from several Islamist organizations, Hizballah, the JamaŒa Islamiyya, and the Ahbash. At the time, some observers spoke of an "Algeria scenario"whereby the Islamists had entered parliament in order to infiltrate state organisms and better propagate their political messages. A few went so far as to predict that Hizballah and the JamaŒa would be the real opposition within parliament. This reasoning was shown to be faulty: the Islamists have rarely voted as a unified parliamentary bloc, and instead of merely using the system they have very much sought to become integrated into it. Parliament, rather than becoming a new base for hitherto marginal Islamist forces, showed that it could impose a relatively harmonious - even homogeneous - behavior on all of its constituent members. The problem, however, is that parliaments are generally the only state institutions in which diversity is seen as a advantage.
The illusion of numbers. As parliament regained some of its lost legitimacy in the first year of its mandate, observers came to speak of the Lebanese system as a "Republic of deputies."It appeared that the executive branch had little chance of making headway against a parliament staunchly protective of its prerogatives.[1] With time, and as the prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, was able to cast out his critics from the government, the executive branch gained the upper hand: in the face of governmental unity, parliament became instead an assembly of contradictory opinions. What had appeared as a strength, parliament's capacity to reflect a wide spectrum of opinion, was instead shown to be a weakness. One particular advantage of the government has been its mastery (and manipulation) of information. Because of a shortage of funds, the parliament has been unable to collect the documentary tools needed to challenge government programs; this has been particularly evident as regards refuting the finance ministry's often debatable economic projections. As a result, the initiative has shifted to the government in the preparation and implementation of legislation, over which parliament has maintained little oversight power.
These misreadings - four among many - lead to three principal conclusions relating to parliament: first, that the legislature is incapable at present of representing an effective counter-balance to the executive branch; at the same time, no alternative to parliament exists for opposition parties wanting to have a say in the system; second, that parliament has been able to impose a relatively homogeneous pattern of behavior on its members - even those from Islamist parties - that has limited its capacity to be imaginative in offering political alternatives; and, third, that parliament's initial advantage against the government - namely that it represented a broad range of views - became, for different reasons, a disadvantage as Mr. Hariri managed to streamline his government by removing his critics from it.
As the 1992 parliament's term enters its final stretch - unless, according to the prevailing fashion, its mandate is also extended - one is forced to conclude that the post-Ta'if system requires a great deal of tinkering before it can be deemed optimal. In the past three years, the deficiencies of parliament have become too flagrant for them to be hidden behind the optimistic pronouncements of deputies keen on re-election. The Lebanese system is suffering from a breakdown in the separation of powers, the cornerstone of any democratic system. Will parliament, the institution best able to reflect the diversity of national aspirations, be able to reimpose itself on a system that has become increasingly less democratic? It may be years before an answer comes.
Notes
1. As Joseph Bahout remarks in his paper, opposition to the government was a principal source of legitimacy for parliament.
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