Lebanese election roundup

Taking a look at the results from the election earlier this month

Most of the international media headlines from the results of the election last week were something along the lines of “Hezbollah and its allies lose parliamentary majority”. While technically true, it’s a pretty one-dimensional summary of the results that ignores some important factors.

“March 8” MPs did lose their majority they won in 2018, but majorities haven’t mattered much in Lebanese politics for a few years. The government before the 2018 elections (when there was a March 14 majority in parliament) was a national unity government of both camps, and the government that was eventually formed after the elections was made up of the same parties, still with Saad Hariri as Prime Minister. Most parties, and especially Hezbollah, are more comfortable with these “grand coalition” arrangements that bring everyone to the table, rather than leaving half the country out and stoking tension. Whatever government is formed next (and that will likely take months due to negiotiations over who gets what cabinet position), it will very likely be another unity government.

We have the full results of the elections, but the allegiance of some of the new MPs is not so clear, making it hard to say exactly how many MPs each faction has. By my count, out of 128 seats, March 8 won about 60 of them. Of the more loosely-defined/former March 14 camp, the Lebanese Forces/Progressive Socialist Party and their allies won about 30, the supposedly opposition “sovereigntist” camp (of which Kataeb is the biggest force) won about 10, and then there are 12 mostly Sunni MPs who either ran on lists of ex-Future Movement members or lists supported by the Islamic Group, and the allegiance of some of these MPs is ambiguous. Finally, the October 19 protest movement lists won 16 seats.

The Free Patriotic Movement, which has either 17 or 18 seats (not sure if one of the independents that ran with them should be counted for them), making them the second largest Christian party in parliament behind the Lebanese Forces (19 seats) for the first time ever. The LF has claimed this as a big victory, even though they only swung a few seats in their favour from 2018, and the FPM may still end up with the largest parliamentary bloc after they add the three MPs from the Armenian party Tashnag. However, the FPM has undoubtedly lost ground. Their bloc had 29 MPs in the last election, which included several independent MPs who turned against them, like Neemat Frem and Chamel Roukoz, and Talal Arslan, leader of the Lebanese Democratic Party, who lost his seat this year. FPM leader Gebran Bassil is looking towards the presidential election later this year, and a reduced bloc in parliament doesn’t help his chances.

Hezbollah remains strong, gaining votes from 2018, as well as a seat, bringing them to 13 MPs, and a 100% success rate for their candidates. Amal, on the other hand, suffered a bit of a loss in votes, and dropped two MPs, from 16 to 14, including in Saida-Jezzine, where they and the FPM both fell below the electoral threshold because they ran against each other. With March 8 losing their majority, some have questioned if Amal leader Nabih Berri can be replaced as Speaker of Parliament, but this won’t happen. The FPM has bad relations with Amal, but Bassil can’t afford to alienate his allies, so he would vote for Berri, and PSP leader Walid Jumblatt, despite being in the opposite camp, is a very close Berri ally, and his MPs would give Berri the majority he needs. What’s more, Hezbollah and Amal won every single Shia seat (except for close Hezbollah ally independent Jamil el-Sayyed), and since the Speaker of Parliament must be a Shia, there is no other candidate who can challenge Berri for the role without abandoning their own party. Berri will return to the Speaker’s chair, though it is an open question who be elected to the position of Deputy Speaker, since the previous holder of that post, Elie Ferzli, lost his seat.

Besides Ferzli and Talal Arslan, a few other minor party/independent March 8 figures lost their seats. Faisal Karami in Tripoli, one of Hezbollah’s close Sunni allies, was ousted, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party lost all three of their seats. It’s the first time the party won’t be in parliament since before 1992, and it’s mostly their own fault. The party has been suffering from a factional split since last year, and the competing factions ran separate slates of candidates, including against each other in Koura in the North III district, a historical stronghold for the party. This resulted in the defeat both incumbent Salim Saadeh from the breakaway faction and Walid al Azar, who was supported by the official party leadership. Their combined votes would have been enough to elect one of them. Additionally, Assad Hardan, former leader of the party and now leader of the breakaway faction, lost his seat in South III to a protest movement candidate.

Finally in the March 8 camp, the Marada Movement, a Christian party in the north led by the Frangieh family, has dropped from three seats to one. Two of their independent allies won as well, Farid el-Khazen in Keserwan and William Tawk in Bcharre, both of whom are from old and powerful families, like the Frangiehs. Neither one is a clear “Hezbollah ally”, and Tawk, who comes from the seat of power of the Lebanese Forces, has forcefully expressed that he won’t act in Hezbollah’s interests.¹

In the March 14 camp, the LF is the biggest winner, electing 18-20 MPs (again, unclear of the affiliation of some independents, it will be clearer when the parliamentary blocs are formed), plus a few other allies, like Ashraf Rifi, a powerful Sunni politician in Tripoli and former head of the Internal Security Forces who has been a vocal critic of both Hezbollah and Saad Hariri, and Camille Dory Chamoun, leader of the National Liberal Party, and grandson of former President Camille Chamoun (1952-1958).

The Progressive Socialist Party did a lot better than expected, losing only one seat from their 2018 total. Even while opposition candidates had a big win in Chouf-Aley with three seats, the PSP held on to all three of their Druze seats in the district, as well as a couple seats of allies in other sects. The party has a very organized electoral machine and was able to efficiently coordinate preferential votes to their candidates, and didn’t lose many votes overall.

The “independent sovereigntist” grouping, which is mostly centred around Kataeb, also did reasonably well. This broad group includes former March 14 forces, as well as figures previously close to the FPM, who are presenting themselves as a force for change, but are mostly just a right wing neo-March 14 camp, backed by bankers and businessmen. Kataeb gained one seat, bringing their total to four, and four of their allies, including Neemat Frem and Michel Mouawad won seats, as well as regional zaims like Fouad Makhzoumi and Michel Daher, who might also be considered in this camp.

The last aspect of the March 14/pseudo-March 14 camp is the most unclear, this collection of 12 mostly Sunni MPs. Some are former Future Movement, one is maybe allied with Mikati, four are from lists supported by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Group but it looks like only one of the four is actually a member. One of those four, who won Tripoli’s Alawite seat, was revealed after the election to be a supporter of Bashar al-Assad, putting him completely at odds with the party that backed his list. It’s possible he will join the March 8 camp. Things might become more clear about the affiliations of most of these MPs after the blocs have formed, and four of them have already announced the creation of a bloc—“Akkar Development”, formed by ex-Future candidates elected in the northern Akkar district.

The parties from the protest movement, divided across different competing lists, managed to elect 16 candidates, which many celebrated as a big win for the opposition.

Firstly though, it bears mentioning the losers. Citizens in a State, which ran separately from the rest of the opposition in most districts, failed to win a single seat and came far short of their targeted number of votes, with about 1.5% nationwide. MMFD believed that it was a better strategy to run on a specific program and try to get popular support for that agenda, rather than ally with a bunch of groups with contrasting policies just for the sake of winning a few seats. It’s clear that opposition-minded voters were not interested in that strategy, and preferred to go with the lists they believed could win. Party leader Charbel Nahas actually lost votes from his 2018 result, when he was the highest-voted opposition candidate in the country. MMFD’s came closest to winning a seat in Metn, where their list came just a few dozen votes short of passing the threshold needed to elect famous podcaster and journalist Jad Ghosn.

While I think Ghosn would have been a good, progressive MP to have in parliament, even if he had been elected I believe it would have represented a failure of MMFD’s goal in the elections. He alone was responsible for more than a third of the party’s votes nationwide, among over 50 candidates. He could attract these votes because he’s a celebrity candidate, and people with prior name recognition tend to get more votes in Lebanon. While he’s certainly a good messenger for the party’s program, I think it’s clear that the votes were more for him as a figure and not for the platform, which is what MMFD wanted to advance. Nevertheless, this is not to take away from his achievement—Metn is a conservative region, and Ghosn managed to convince a lot of voters of his views, even while media was saying that he’s pro-Hezbollah, or that he can’t win and it’s better for opposition voters to vote for Kataeb.

MMFD put out a statement admitting their strategy failed, and saying they will reevaluate. They were still the largest single opposition party by vote count, and even won more votes than much more established and well-funded parties like Kataeb. I hope the party takes a leading role in a unified progressive opposition in the years going forward.

As for the wins: The Saida-Jezzine district was the only part of the country where an opposition list won a majority of seats. The list including Osama Saad of the Popular Nasserist Organization and Abdulrahman Bizri won three of the five seats in the district—the two of them filling both Saida seats, and one of their list members picking up a Christian seat in Jezzine. The Lebanese Forces won the other two Jezzine seats. The result was made possible by the FPM and Amal running on opposing lists and both falling short of passing the seat threshold.

Saad is a reliable progressive vote, I’m not sure about how Bizri and the other MP will act, but hopefully they lean more towards the side of opposing banking interests than supporting them.

In the South III district, the opposition had a historic breakthrough, ending the monopoly of the Hezbollah/Amal alliance over the seats in the district. Doctor Elias Jarada won the Greek Orthodox seat, beating Assaad Hardan of the SSNP, and Firas Hamdan won the Druze seat, beating Marwan Kheireddine, a prominent banker backed by both Talal Arslan and Walid Jumblatt, who was included on the Hezbollah/Amal list as a favour to their allies. The candidacy of Kheireddine, who chairs the Al-Mawarid Bank and is a former board member of the Association of Banks in Lebanon, was extremely controversial due to the role of the banks in causing the economic crisis, and his presence almost certainly cost his list votes. South III was the only district where the opposition was entirely united on one list, allowing them to get 12.7% of the vote, above the 9.1% threshold. Both Jarada and Hamdan seem like they will be good MPs, Jarada does not identify as a leftist but is close with the Communist Party, and Hamdan is active in the depositors movement, which seeks to protect banking depositors’ assets and shift the financial burden of the economic crisis onto the banks.

In Mount Lebanon IV, three opposition candidates were elected. One is Halime Kaakour, who leads a party called Lana. I don’t know much about her but it’s apparently a self-described social democratic party and progressives I know seem fairly happy with her election. The other two new MPs are Mark Daou and Najat Aoun, both from a party called Taqaddom. Daou isn’t the leader of Taqaddom, but has become its public face, and reportedly financed a lot the campaign. These two are seen on the more neoliberal side in economic issues, and have made opposition to Hezbollah’s arms a big part of their campaign, leading some to associate them with Kataeb.

In East Beirut, the opposition list led by Paula Yacoubian won two seats. Yacoubian was the only opposition MP elected in 2018 and was comfortably re-elected. Progressive activists are generally not very happy with her, she was close to Hariri before entering politics as an “independent” and is more or less a centrist. She was kicked out of her old party Sabaa a few years ago due to non-cooperation with the party leadership, and this time represents a new party called Tahalof Watani. Also elected with her is Cynthia Zarazir, a lesser known candidate who won with relatively few votes. Zarazir attracted immediate controvery after the election for an old tweet where she said “Together for the genocide of Syrians, I don't care what gender or sect. They've done nothing but caused trouble to Lebanon.” Faced with the backlash to this, Zarazir said she apologized for the use of the word “genocide” but not for her position against Syrian refugees. Zarazir’s attitude is very common in Christian sectarian politics, and in fact she is a former FPM member and even has a picture of Michel Aoun tattooed on her neck. Needless to say, this is a pretty disgraceful representative for the opposition, especially given that she is unapologetic about her views. She represents the ReLebanon party.

In West Beirut, three opposition figures were elected. One is Melhem Khalaf, the former head of the Beirut Bar Association (bar as in lawyers). A lot of progressives I’ve seen has said he leans to the right, but an official from the Communist Party that I talked to before the election said they were directing their preferential votes in the district towards him so I’m not sure what’s going on there. His name has come up as a possibility for Deputy Speaker as some kind of compromise candidate. Also elected was Ibrahim Mneimneh, from the progressive group Mada, and people on the left seem positively inclined towards him. Lastly, there is Wadah Saddek, from a right wing party called Khat Amar. He is very clearly on the right, has expressed opposition to the advancement of any kind of LGBT rights, and is an old Future Movement supporter. The party itself was founded by a group of private sector business interests, and its leader Samir Saliba, who ran as a candidate in Metn on a list with Kataeb, is the owner of a chain of sporting goods stores. It is another party that focuses heavily on Hezbollah’s weapons.

One opposition candidate was elected in the West Bekaa-Rachaya district—Yassine Yassine. He has attracted particular controvery for a video in which he said he would not vote for anything that went against Islamic sharia. Yassine is a wealthy businessman who employs hundreds of people in the West Bekaa, and used his money and connections to build an extensive campaign network, which some commentators noted looked a lot like the campaigns of the traditional parties. He also has previous connections to Hariri.

The last two opposition MPs are from the north, Michel El Douaihy in Zgharta and Rami Fanj in Tripoli. I haven’t heard much about either of them.

From what I heard after the election, these 16 MPs were in talks about forming a unified parliamentary bloc. I don’t know the state of that now. It’s possible some on the right wing would prefer to join in a bloc with Kataeb and other “sovereigntists”. It might be better if the more left-leaning MPs, however many there actually are, formed their own bloc for the sake of ideological coherence and building the foundations of a united progressive movement.

These elections were a breakthrough for secular democratic forces, but it was still a victory for the allies of the banks and oligarchs, both within the establishment and the opposition. Not to say that wasn’t expected though. Hopefully the left can find its feet and continue the struggle for transformative change.

1. The Tawk family is a historically prominent clan in Bcharre, and William Tawk’s cousin is actually Sethrida Geagea, the wife of LF leader Samir Geagea. Despite their familial relationship, the two ran on competing lists, and were both elected as MPs for the district (with the LF losing its second seat in Bcharre).