Parliamentary elections in Lebanon on May 15 will keep in power many of the same political elites that have led the country into a ruinous economic crisis, a dispiriting outcome for the domestic opposition and foreign actors aiming to avoid the creation of yet another failed state in the region. These results should impel stakeholders to navigate the narrow limits of change imposed by domestic and regional conditions.
Parliamentary elections, and ways to deter the ruling elite from cancelling the polls, have taken center stage in debates about Lebanon in the past year. Voting in a new parliament might have been an inflection point toward the change needed to unlock substantial foreign assistance and thereby arrest the country’s descent into ever-deeper crisis.… Seguir leyendo »
El análisis de Oriente Medio se presta en muchas ocasiones a la precipitación y el alarmismo. El deseo de entender lo complejo y anticiparnos a un futuro necesariamente incierto engendra la prisa por reaccionar. El problema surge cuando, si no tenemos nada sólido que decir pero tenemos prisa por decir algo, nos subimos al carro del catastrofismo apocalíptico. Que Trump se retire del acuerdo nuclear con Irán nos puede llevar a profetizar desde un proceso de escala regional, a un ataque de/a Israel, hasta un proceso de escalada global y finalmente el Armagedón atómico. Que Israel bombardea los Altos del Golán, hay quien intuye un proceso de escalada, un ataque de Siria o Irán y la guerra total.… Seguir leyendo »
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about the parliamentary elections on Sunday in Lebanon is that they were held at all after years of delay and political inertia, corruption, economic stagnation and foreign meddling.
Lebanon suffers from multiple crises that lead to a perpetual state of paralysis: more than one million Syrian refugees are straining social services; public debt stands at $79 billion, or 150 percent of gross domestic product; the government fails to provide basic services like electricity and garbage collection; and there are fears of a new war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shiite party and dominant military force in Lebanon.… Seguir leyendo »
On May 6, Lebanon held its first parliamentary elections in nearly a decade. Since 2009, Lebanon faces several new challenges — the influx of Syrian refugees, the breakdown of waste management, economic crisis. Sunday’s election was Lebanese voters’ first opportunity to hold parliament accountable for its responses to these challenges. The elections were also an occasion for other firsts — a new electoral law with a proportional representation component, standardized ballot and provision for expat voting; as well as the participation of a record-breaking number of women candidates; and a broad civil society coalition opposing traditional elites.
Lebanon finally held a parliamentary election, nine years after the last one and following several false starts over the past five years, but the results have not brought change to the country's political status quo. The same old political elites continue to dominate Lebanon's political scene, winning the vast majority of seats.
Turn out in this election was lower than in the previous one, standing at 49 per cent. This signals a sense of popular ambivalence about the political process among most Lebanese, especially since the outgoing parliament renewed its own mandate twice unconstitutionally, and since the elections that were meant to take place in 2013 kept being postponed under the pretext of lack of security.… Seguir leyendo »
The 6 May elections readjusted the political balance but brought no fundamental change. As before, no government can be formed without Hizbollah. To be effective in government the Shiite Islamist movement, as always, will have to reach out to partners that oppose much of its agenda. Hizbollah is not about to take formal control of the next government, however, because that move would put Lebanon at risk of losing crucial foreign support or even becoming a pariah state.
The main feature of the polls was not the Shiite movement’s triumph but significant losses for Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, which saw its parliamentary bloc dwindle by a third to twenty seats of the 128-seat parliament.… Seguir leyendo »
On Sunday, Lebanese citizens will vote in national elections for the first time since 2009. These are the first elections since the passage in June 2017 of a new electoral law and the first since the 2016 Beirut municipal elections, when a grass-roots campaign won almost 40 percent of votes, challenging Lebanon’s long-standing patronage-based sectarian parties.
Will that challenge actually change the voting behavior of Lebanese citizens on the national level? To test the relative influence of service provision, programmatic platforms and religious identity on citizens’ political behavior, we conducted a survey experiment in October and November 2017 in which 2,400 respondents were asked to choose between two hypothetical candidates whose profiles varied randomly on a range of attributes.… Seguir leyendo »
On Sunday, tens of thousands of Lebanese citizens will head to the polls to elect a new 128-member parliament. Against a background of rampant corruption, an economy on the verge of collapsing and rising regional tension, here are four key things to know about the upcoming elections in Lebanon.
1. The first elections since 2009 will test changing alliances
The last time Lebanese citizens elected a new parliament was in 2009. Citing concerns over the spillover effects from neighboring Syria’s ongoing civil war, members of parliament postponed the scheduled elections in 2013, 2014 and 2017. While the political elite used the events in Syria to publicly justify postponing elections, the true motive was the changing balance of power among the many local parties.… Seguir leyendo »
On Sunday Lebanon witnessed its first round of elections in four years with the holding of municipal elections. They were a landmark event because this was the first time a technocratic list of independent candidates not belonging to any political party (called the 'Beirut Madinati' or Beirut My City list) contested the municipal elections in the governorate of Beirut in at attempt at challenging the status quo.
Beirut Madinati did not win a single seat, and the prevailing list in Beirut was called the 'Beirutis', representing the dominant political parties in Lebanon. What is notable about the 'Beirutis' list is that it brought together candidates from Lebanon’s two main political camps - March 8 and March 14 - that hitherto had been arch rivals in elections.… Seguir leyendo »
Hace tres años, unas revueltas populares derrocaron a cuatro presidentes vitalicios árabes, poniendo de relieve el grado en que los sistemas políticos clientelares que habían construido para mantener su dominio se habían atrofiado y habían perdido su capacidad de resistencia y recuperación. Incapaces de digerir las tensiones y desafíos generados por el cambio social y económico, se habían convertido en frágiles y vulnerables además de perder el control de la denominada primavera árabe.
Una clase muy distinta de primavera está en marcha, ya que cuatro países árabes se acercan a las elecciones presidenciales o las han celebrado estos meses. Sólo uno de ellos –Egipto– tuvo de hecho su primavera, mientras que Siria se halla sumida en una brutal guerra civil y el régimen argelino se las ha arreglado para fragmentar y neutralizar cualquier tipo de oposición popular.… Seguir leyendo »
Tema: En este ARI se trata la situación política en Líbano tras las elecciones parlamentarias de 2009.
Resumen: Los resultados de las elecciones parlamentarias del pasado 7 de junio han sorprendido a los libaneses, a la comunidad internacional e incluso a la coalición ganadora del “14 de Marzo”, que no esperaba obtener 71 de los 128 escaños. Estas elecciones, denominadas históricas por muchos medios, consagran la legitimidad de la coalición mayoritaria y otorgan una nueva confianza a sus líderes, pero no resuelven la crisis que ha caracterizado a Líbano en los últimos años. Lejos de los titulares triunfalistas y simplistas de gran parte de la prensa estadounidense y europea, proclamando la victoria de Occidente sobre Siria e Irán en el frente libanés, los resultados y las consecuencias de las elecciones esconden un panorama mucho más complejo.… Seguir leyendo »
With elections in Lebanon and Iran occurring in the same week, it’s inevitable that they are viewed as twin tests of efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world. Should we celebrate the outcome in Lebanon and push for elections throughout the Middle East, or sourly note that Hezbollah has exactly as many guns now as it had when it was defeated at the polls on Sunday? Is the Iranian presidential election today a festival of freedom or a cover for theocracy?
What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test.… Seguir leyendo »
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