Pity Lebanese Democracy: Do Not Vote on August 5
Dr. Joseph Hitti
July 28, 2007
On August 5, the Lebanese have to elect representatives for two seats in Parliament, to replace two MPs assassinated by the Syrians and their residual dogs in Lebanon. One seat is Christian and the other seat is Moslem. The Christian seat is for the Maronite mountainous heartland of the Matn, the other is for a Sunni seat in Beirut.
The Moslem seat will not be waging an election battle. The Patriarch of the Hariri Mafia family (who himself was anointed “supreme leader” in a medieval "mubayaat" - or swearing of allegiance after his father's 2005 assassination) has appointed the candidate, and the urban and sophisticated Sunnis of Beirut will be voting Syrian-style in a one-candidate vote who will probably garner upwards of 97.3 % of the vote. So much for Lebanese democracy Moslemside.
On the Maronite Christian side of the by-elections, there is at least a semblance of a competition, albeit a sad one that reminds me of the 2000 US Presidential elections between clownish George Bush (with the Bush empire and Dad’s connections behind him) and Al Gore, the pedantic slow-witted drone of a Democrat.
On one side of the Maronite electoral battle is another Patriarch of the Lebanese Mafia families, Mr. Amin Gemayel - whose father, brother and son were all leaders, MPs, and Presidents, with the latter two having died in assassinations. Mr. Amine Gemayel himself was President in the mid 1980s and is largely responsible for losing Lebanon to the Syrian occupation. He is presenting himself as a candidate for the by-elections in the Matn to replace his assassinated son.
On the other side, the Free Patriotic Movement party of Michel Aoun, a former General in the Lebanese Army and Prime Minister of an interim government, is fielding Camille Khoury as a candidate to stand against Gemayel. As an unknown individual, Mr. Khoury brings a welcome freshness to Lebanese elections, only if he is allowed to express himself freely to tell us not only why he is running, but why he is running under the FPM banner.
Two issues present the Matn voters with a conundrum: On one hand, they are tired of the big families and of Amine Gemayel whose own candidacy is an insult to the Lebanese, as if there is no one among the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Christian residents of the Matn to represent them but this failure of a man whose claim to power and politics is his genes and whose corruption and mismanagement lost Lebanon to the Syrians. To the Lebanese, Gemayel's candidacy is the same as George W. Bush's candidacy to the Americans: Big family, big money, and the assuredness of genetic idiots whose belief in their entitlement to power shows in their facial expressions.
On the other hand, they are sick of Michel Aoun's cozy alliance with Hezbollah, a murderous Shiite militia that actually helped Syria cement its grip on the country, bombed and killed every Westerner who stayed in Beirut of the 1980s, and whose pathetic quixotic bravados of resistance invited a war last summer with Israel that demolished all that the Lebanese people rebuilt over the past 15 years. Aoun's thrust back into Lebanese politics after 15 years of exile has been marred by his adopting a simplistic amicable posture vis-ŕ-vis his former enemy Syria, in order to cement his alliance with the fundamentalist Hezbollah that cannot be explained - as Aoun's apologists do - by a desire to bridge the chasms between the Maronite and Shiite communities. This too, is an insult to the Lebanese people's intelligence. Furthermore, as he made his rapprochement with the Shiites to secure his position in Lebanese politics, he tried to scare the Christians into accepting his Hezbollah alliance by brandishing a Sunni threat that is supposedly more dangerous that the Shiite threat. Go figure. Aoun is asking me to side with proponents of an Iranian style theocracy, led by a rabid turban-clad bearded Shiite fellow named Nasrallah, to whom God talks every day in his hideouts, and against Sunni Hariri who wears suits, and runs a multibillion-dollar empire, but behind whose Saudi-style goatee supposedly lurks Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabism at its worst.
But these are the two choices that the Lebanese Christians are faced with as they vote on August 5. There is a third candidate, an independent one, Joseph Mansour Asmar, but he has no chance to present his ideas or to let the voters know who he is because of the bullying tactics of the Gemayels and the Aounists, and because every media channel in Lebanon is owned by one of the protagonists: Hariri has his channel, Nasrallah has his, Berri has his, etc., and just last week, Aoun made it into the club and got his own television channel with which to feed even more tragic hay to the Lebanese herd. Anyone else can eat dirt if they want, but they will not get a fair share of visibility to talk to the Lebanese people.
If I, as a displaced Lebanese, were allowed to vote from abroad, I would vote for the independent candidate, if I knew a bit more about him. Better yet, the Lebanese should stay home and refuse to vote. Just to begin cleaning Lebanese politics from the scum of centuries of feudalism and family entitlements, arrogant bullies, and medieval traditionalist notables who can barely read and write; from fundamentalist religious illuminati who dress like 8th century buffoons, and tell the Lebanese that God talks to them and tells them when to wage war, when to make peace, and when to be allowed to maim their children, ruin their livelihoods and destroy their country; former militia warlords and warmongers who allied themselves with every other enemy of Lebanon to secure their grip on political power, to maintain themselves in positions from which they can continue to accumulate wealth for themselves and their families, while denying everything else to the ordinary Lebanese people. The Republic of Lebanon is over the people, up the people’s a.., and in spite of the people.
Since 1975, there is no reliable running water, there is still rationing of electricity, and cell phone rates are the highest in the world. Only last month did DSL make it to Lebanon, only to be tacked with astronomical rates with which fill the pockets of the parasites. It costs $300 to get a Lebanese passport which is twice the minimum monthly wage. You have to beg and bribe your way into getting a new landline telephone number installed at your home, or to register a child born outside Lebanon, or God forbid if your mother is Lebanese but not your father, then this decent government denies you Lebanese citizenship. Imagine, the Lebanese government of the 1950s, long before many European countries, gave women the right to vote but today the present government denies those same women the right to register their children as Lebanese citizens.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg of the cesspool of corruption and backwardness that Lebanon and its sad Republic have become. And on August 6, come to find out that the Lebanese will still vote for the buffoons they are presented with as candidates, again, and again. Out of fear they will vote for the wrong people, and then go tell the world about the wonderful democracy that Lebanon is.
The Moslem seat will not be waging an election battle. The Patriarch of the Hariri Mafia family (who himself was anointed “supreme leader” in a medieval "mubayaat" - or swearing of allegiance after his father's 2005 assassination) has appointed the candidate, and the urban and sophisticated Sunnis of Beirut will be voting Syrian-style in a one-candidate vote who will probably garner upwards of 97.3 % of the vote. So much for Lebanese democracy Moslemside.
On the Maronite Christian side of the by-elections, there is at least a semblance of a competition, albeit a sad one that reminds me of the 2000 US Presidential elections between clownish George Bush (with the Bush empire and Dad’s connections behind him) and Al Gore, the pedantic slow-witted drone of a Democrat.
On one side of the Maronite electoral battle is another Patriarch of the Lebanese Mafia families, Mr. Amin Gemayel - whose father, brother and son were all leaders, MPs, and Presidents, with the latter two having died in assassinations. Mr. Amine Gemayel himself was President in the mid 1980s and is largely responsible for losing Lebanon to the Syrian occupation. He is presenting himself as a candidate for the by-elections in the Matn to replace his assassinated son.
On the other side, the Free Patriotic Movement party of Michel Aoun, a former General in the Lebanese Army and Prime Minister of an interim government, is fielding Camille Khoury as a candidate to stand against Gemayel. As an unknown individual, Mr. Khoury brings a welcome freshness to Lebanese elections, only if he is allowed to express himself freely to tell us not only why he is running, but why he is running under the FPM banner.
Two issues present the Matn voters with a conundrum: On one hand, they are tired of the big families and of Amine Gemayel whose own candidacy is an insult to the Lebanese, as if there is no one among the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Christian residents of the Matn to represent them but this failure of a man whose claim to power and politics is his genes and whose corruption and mismanagement lost Lebanon to the Syrians. To the Lebanese, Gemayel's candidacy is the same as George W. Bush's candidacy to the Americans: Big family, big money, and the assuredness of genetic idiots whose belief in their entitlement to power shows in their facial expressions.
On the other hand, they are sick of Michel Aoun's cozy alliance with Hezbollah, a murderous Shiite militia that actually helped Syria cement its grip on the country, bombed and killed every Westerner who stayed in Beirut of the 1980s, and whose pathetic quixotic bravados of resistance invited a war last summer with Israel that demolished all that the Lebanese people rebuilt over the past 15 years. Aoun's thrust back into Lebanese politics after 15 years of exile has been marred by his adopting a simplistic amicable posture vis-ŕ-vis his former enemy Syria, in order to cement his alliance with the fundamentalist Hezbollah that cannot be explained - as Aoun's apologists do - by a desire to bridge the chasms between the Maronite and Shiite communities. This too, is an insult to the Lebanese people's intelligence. Furthermore, as he made his rapprochement with the Shiites to secure his position in Lebanese politics, he tried to scare the Christians into accepting his Hezbollah alliance by brandishing a Sunni threat that is supposedly more dangerous that the Shiite threat. Go figure. Aoun is asking me to side with proponents of an Iranian style theocracy, led by a rabid turban-clad bearded Shiite fellow named Nasrallah, to whom God talks every day in his hideouts, and against Sunni Hariri who wears suits, and runs a multibillion-dollar empire, but behind whose Saudi-style goatee supposedly lurks Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabism at its worst.
But these are the two choices that the Lebanese Christians are faced with as they vote on August 5. There is a third candidate, an independent one, Joseph Mansour Asmar, but he has no chance to present his ideas or to let the voters know who he is because of the bullying tactics of the Gemayels and the Aounists, and because every media channel in Lebanon is owned by one of the protagonists: Hariri has his channel, Nasrallah has his, Berri has his, etc., and just last week, Aoun made it into the club and got his own television channel with which to feed even more tragic hay to the Lebanese herd. Anyone else can eat dirt if they want, but they will not get a fair share of visibility to talk to the Lebanese people.
If I, as a displaced Lebanese, were allowed to vote from abroad, I would vote for the independent candidate, if I knew a bit more about him. Better yet, the Lebanese should stay home and refuse to vote. Just to begin cleaning Lebanese politics from the scum of centuries of feudalism and family entitlements, arrogant bullies, and medieval traditionalist notables who can barely read and write; from fundamentalist religious illuminati who dress like 8th century buffoons, and tell the Lebanese that God talks to them and tells them when to wage war, when to make peace, and when to be allowed to maim their children, ruin their livelihoods and destroy their country; former militia warlords and warmongers who allied themselves with every other enemy of Lebanon to secure their grip on political power, to maintain themselves in positions from which they can continue to accumulate wealth for themselves and their families, while denying everything else to the ordinary Lebanese people. The Republic of Lebanon is over the people, up the people’s a.., and in spite of the people.
Since 1975, there is no reliable running water, there is still rationing of electricity, and cell phone rates are the highest in the world. Only last month did DSL make it to Lebanon, only to be tacked with astronomical rates with which fill the pockets of the parasites. It costs $300 to get a Lebanese passport which is twice the minimum monthly wage. You have to beg and bribe your way into getting a new landline telephone number installed at your home, or to register a child born outside Lebanon, or God forbid if your mother is Lebanese but not your father, then this decent government denies you Lebanese citizenship. Imagine, the Lebanese government of the 1950s, long before many European countries, gave women the right to vote but today the present government denies those same women the right to register their children as Lebanese citizens.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg of the cesspool of corruption and backwardness that Lebanon and its sad Republic have become. And on August 6, come to find out that the Lebanese will still vote for the buffoons they are presented with as candidates, again, and again. Out of fear they will vote for the wrong people, and then go tell the world about the wonderful democracy that Lebanon is.
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