Will the first meeting at the polls of the Lebanese since the financial collapse and the protest movement of 2019 take place on the scheduled date, May 15? Voices continue to doubt the holding of legislative elections. The machine is however launched. “We see leaders of political parties coming to the funeral [une pratique sociale importante au Liban], while they were invisible since the last elections”laughs Firas, a young Lebanese.
Billboards that could no longer find advertisers, for lack of money, are covered with political posters. TV shows are awash with analysis. A European Union observation mission has arrived in Lebanon. And the lists were closed on Monday, April 4, with a view to the race for the 128 seats in Parliament.
Alliances and compromises
More than a hundred lists will campaign, much more than in the last election of 2018. The seats of deputies are allocated according to community quotas but the lists themselves are multi-confessional. Many coalitions call themselves “change”. The so-called alternative formations, those born or active in the “thaoura” (revolution), the popular uprising of autumn 2019, have not managed to present a united front. This earns them scathing criticism of the ego culture that plagues them. Ideological disagreements have also prevented rapprochements.
Their fragmentation is blessed bread for the traditional forces, which feared little, however, this competition, because they know the electoral game inside out. The most optimistic forecasts envisage only a limited breakthrough of the newcomers. The parties of the system are preparing for a tough confrontation between them.
The ballot, based on a sort of tempered proportional system, induces alliances. The watchword is called compromise. One of the most egregious takes place in the South: the Shiite Hezbollah, standing up against the banking establishment, accused of having caused the bankruptcy of the country, nevertheless appears on one of its lists, shared with its ally Amal , a powerful banker, Marwan Kheireddine, quoted in the “Pandora Papers”, a case of fraud and tax evasion on a very large scale. The latter is seeking a position reserved for a Druze and will not have to fear competition from the main Druze formation, led by Walid Jumblatt, because of the latter’s friendship with Nabih Berri (Shiite, leader of Amal and Speaker of Parliament).
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