Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1998, Pages 55-56

Letter From Lebanon

Lebanon Holds First Municipal Elections in 35 Years

By Carole Dagher

For the first time in 35 years, municipal elections have been held in Lebanon. The current elections, held each Sunday in a different jurisdiction between May 24 and June 14, were the first since 1963! For a whole month, therefore, the Lebanese people, and particularly the youth, conducted through grass-roots activism local electoral campaigns that had less to do with politics than with civic concerns, public service and municipal organization.

In many villages and towns all over Lebanon, municipal councils were largely vacant or composed of elderly members who could not carry out their duties on a regular basis. Through emigration and rural depopulation, various regional bodies had suffered erosion of their infrastructures and anemia in community life.

Correspondingly, the powers of the central government have increased at the expense of the mayors and the local councils. Over the past five years, Lebanese governments have used the alleged imperatives of reconstruction to justify expanded state intervention in virtually all aspects of political and social life.

A last attempt by the central government to avoid elections failed a few months ago after the Council of Ministers took a decision to postpone the May-June elections and to extend the mandates of mayors and local councils to April 1999. The decree was appealed by 14 deputies before the Constitutional Council, who overruled the Cabinet decree, noting that the extension until 1999 was unconstitutional since there were no exceptional circumstances warranting it.

Furthermore, an independent grouping formally launched a national campaign to collect signatures on an open-ended petition calling for the organization of local elections. It was backed by several members of parliament and largely echoed by the media. The demand had nation-wide appeal.

So the Ministry of Interior started preparing for elections to be held in the Spring of 1998. Such efforts were nonetheless accompanied by public skepticism that a real democratic process would take place without political interference and pressure, since the 1992 and 1996 parliamentary elections had been manipulated in one way or another.

But the outcome was surprisingly positive. Under tight security measures, the voters cast their ballots in a democratic and orderly atmosphere, with no major incidents reported. In fact, the municipal elections proved to be more popular than parliamentary elections, with participation reaching nearly 70 percent.

A Plethora of Candidates

In each of Lebanon’s five mohafaza’—Mount Lebanon, North Lebanon, Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa (each one of which is divided in turn into smaller jurisdictions, called caza)—a plethora of candidates—among them a certain number of women—emerged. All political forces and trends participated in the campaign, including the opposition groups that boycotted the previous parliamentary elections—notably the Christian Aounist movement as well as the banned “Lebanese Forces” of Samir Geagea.

Competition among candidates occurred along family and clan lines rather than political ones (families are the backbone of the political groupings at the local level), and very often there was competition within the same family, where cousins or even brothers vied for leadership of a community. This was especially the case in Mount Lebanon, which is the geographical and historical center of Lebanon, and in North Lebanon (particularly in the caza of Zghorta, where the minister of health, who is a grandson of the late President Sleiman Frangié, defeated a coalition led by deputy Nayla Moawad, widow of the late President René Moawad).

If some battles looked more like opposition versus pro-government groupings (as in Tripoli, the capital of North Lebanon, where Omar Karamé, former chief of government, led a fierce battle against the coalition supported by Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri), other places witnessed a set of odd political deals.

That was the case in Beirut. The Lebanese capital was the center of competition between new coalitions of old political enemies. The pro-government list was headed by Prime Minister Hariri, who had the strongest electoral machine in town. The opposition list was led by his most active parliamentary opponent, deputy Najah Wakim. Hariri had put together a “consensual” list based on an alliance with Tammam Salam, heir of the influential Sunni Muslim Salam family. Hariri publicly and repeatedly expressed his desire for confessional equilibrium, so that Christians would be equally represented with Muslims in the 24-member Beirut municipal council, despite a slight demographic predominance of Muslims in the capital.

His “consensual” list was the perfect reflection of the old Lebanese consensus spirit, since it included representatives of all major religious communities, but more particularly representatives of the traditional Sunni families from Beirut, pro-Hariri men, a Shi’a representative of the Hezbollah movement and another one from Amal, the rival Shi’i party of Nabih Berri. On the Christian side, the list included representatives of the Kataeb (Phalange) party, the “Lebanese Forces” (both were political opponents of the prime minister) and the Maronite League, the Greek Orthodox establishment of Beirut (the Greek Orthodox community, like the Sunni community, views Beirut as its traditional bastion), the Armenian community (which is influential in the Lebanese capital) and representatives of other Christian minorities.

The opposition list was as heterogeneous as the Hariri list, since it bunched together representatives of leftist movements and of the Aounist movement (partisans of Gen. Michel Aoun), along with pro-Syrian politicians. All in the opposition camp had one thing in common: their opposition to Hariri.

The outcome of the Beirut election was nevertheless predictable. Hariri’s coalition won because Hariri could not afford to lose the capital, the rebuilding of which was—through the Solidere company—the core project of his reconstruction program.

The Emergence of Confessional Groupings

The municipal election results have unveiled the hidden and real power of the diverse political parties on the ground, and in particular, have revealed the re-emergence of radical confessional groupings.

The Hezbollah party showed its ability to function as a grass-roots organization with a well-greased electoral machine in various jurisdictions, notably the Bekaa and the south. Hezbollah also scored surprise victories in two major Beirut suburban municipalities administratively linked to the mohafaza of Mount Lebanon, despite a coalition led by Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Hariri aimed at barring the Hezbollah’s way.

Resorting to tactical alliances, the Hezbollah leaders did not disdain joining the prime minister’s “consensual” list in Beirut because it was more likely to win than the opposition list. But in the south, the Hezbollah led a fierce battle against its Shi’i rival, the Amal movement led by Speaker Berri, over the leadership of the Sh’i community. Hezbollah won the southern city of Nabatyeh while Amal dominated the city of Tyre. In other villages and towns of southern Lebanon, both parties made inroads into the other’s turf, proving to be almost of equal strength, but with a slight advantage in favor of Amal.

The growing strength of Hezbollah on the ground pushed all major political groupings in the Bekaa, including “Amal” and some Shi’i tribes, to unite against it to prevent it from winning control of Baalbeck, an important touristic city in Lebanon. In the Baalbeck-Hermel area, the partisans of Sheikh Toufayli (still on the run since a Lebanese army crackdown against his militiamen last winter) were the main competitors.

The other big surprise of the municipal elections was registered by the “Lebanese Forces,” the former Christian militia that was banned in 1994 after its leader, Samir Geagea, was convicted on charges of bombing a church in Zouk and endangering public order. While Geagea is still imprisoned at the Ministry of Defense on various war crimes charges, his followers, led by his wife, Sethrida Geagea, achieved a major success in his hometown in northern Lebanon, the Cedars village of Becharré, where they won all municipal seats. They also demonstrated predominance in such northern caza as Koura, where their candidates were elected to the municipal councils. Analysts agreed that this victory confirmed their political comeback after a semi-underground period. This comeback was confirmed also in Beirut, where the Lebanese Forces candidate was elected on the list of Prime Minister Hariri. This electoral victory led to the appearance of Geagea’s partisans in the streets of the Christian bastion of Beirut, Ashrafieh, where flags of the former Christian militia and portraits of its leader were openly brandished for the first time in years.

On the other hand, the Aounist movement, which claims broad nationalistic goals rather than sectarian ones, despite the Christian identity of the majority of its followers, registered a surprisingly weak performance in the Christian regions.

The third emerging confessional grouping is the (Sunni) Islamic fundamentalist movement Jama’a Islamiya, the Lebanese equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Egypt. In Tripoli, the Jama’a won eight of the 24 seats in the municipal council. In Saida (Sidon), the capital city of the south and Hariri’s hometown, the Jama’a Islamiya played a pivotal role in the victory of the Hariri-supported municipal list, winning five seats out of 21. The Jama’s Islamiya also asserted its presence in the Sunni villages of Iqlim Al-Kharroub, suburbs of Saida, and in some areas of the north and of Beirut.

In the mountainous Chouf region opposition Christian leader Dory Chamoun regained his stronghold of Deir el-Kamar, with the support of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and with the goal of returning the area’s displaced Christians who fled from their villages during the massacres that accompanied the 1983 Israeli withdrawal. However, the municipal elections did not lead to an opposition sweep of the whole political configuration. Loyalists also asserted their influence, and key players whose support was decisive to win the electoral battles included such representatives of the current power as Minister of Interior Michel Murr in the Metn/Mount Lebanon, Minister of Foreign Affairs Fares Boueiz in Jounieh and the Kesrouan/Mount Lebanon area, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut and his hometown of Saida in the south, Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri in southern Lebanon. In the Bekaa Valley, President of the Republic Elias Hrawi led a personal battle against the traditional leadership of Zahle, represented by the Greek-Catholic deputy Elias Skaff. One of Hrawi’s sons, George, allied himself with the Skaff family against his father and his two brothers. The senior Hrawi’s objective had been to assert his influence in his hometown a few months before the end of his current mandate. It was also said that Prime Minister Hariri supported the Skaff list and leadership.

French President Chirac Visits

In the midst of these elections, French President Jacques Chirac paid his third visit to Lebanon in two years, confirming his interest in “one of the most beautiful and most moving” countries, as he put it. The main purpose of his visit was the inauguration of the Pine Residence, the magnificent Ottoman-style building that had been the residence of French ambassadors near the junction of the former East and West Beirut (known as the “Green Line” during the war) before the residence was destroyed during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut. Chirac took the decision to restore it two years ago, and the French government earmarked $10 million (U.S.) for that purpose.

The Pine Residence also had a profound historical significance for both Lebanon and France. From its steps, the French High Commissioner in the Levant Henri Gouraud had announced the creation of the State of Lebanon on Sept. 1, 1920 (France was the League of Nations mandatory power over Lebanon and Syria between World Wars I and II).

Chirac recalled that historic moment during a reception attended by nearly 4,000 guests. He underlined the importance of Lebanese-French political, cultural and economic relations (France is the second exporting partner of Lebanon after Italy—the USA ranks third) and praised the “multi-religious and francophone” traits of Lebanon. President Chirac also took some significant political stands during his Lebanese visit, adopting the Lebanese and Syrian view concerning the conditional Israeli proposal to comply with the withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon as called for by United Nations Resolution 425.

Chirac called for an “immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Israeli forces from southern Lebanon,” specifying that “U.N. resolutions cannot be subject to any interpretation or negotiation.” Chirac said also that “there would be no separate peace accord, for peace could only be global, not fragmented into many pieces.” He said Syria should be able to recover the Golan Heights and volunteered that “France would be ready, if asked by the main parties concerned, to participate in some form of guarantee of the international borders” of Lebanon.

Chirac noted that there can be “no security without peace” (the position defended by Lebanon and Syria) and called on Israel to go back to the “land-for-peace” principle, and to accept the U.S. proposal for an Israeli withdrawal from 13.1 percent of the West Bank, describing it as “reasonable.” He confirmed the willingness of France to co-sponsor with Egypt a summit aimed at saving peace in the Middle East, because “we will not give up to the proclaimed death of the peace process.”

The French president’s outspoken stands were applauded by Lebanese officials, but the Israeli government reacted the second day by expressing its “regrets” at Chirac’s declarations.