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Beirut, Lebanon – Before the mass protests against the Lebanese government’s elite in October 2019 took over the country, Yasmin Saad never thought he would invest particularly in his country’s politics.
But two years later, seeing some compound crises that millions of Lebanese were suffering from France, the 22-year-old marketing student decided to sign up to vote in next year’s parliamentary elections.
“I feel like it’s one last chance or one last hope,” Saad told Marseille’s Al Jazeera. “It was really, really, what pushed me to vote in those days when everyone was protesting in the street, and we were holding protests and rallies in France.”
He is not alone. More than 210,000 Lebanese living abroad have met Saturday’s deadline and registered to vote in the March 27 election – more than double the number of those who registered in previous elections in 2018.
Millions of Lebanese have left the country in recent decades, taking their skills and talents abroad in search of better opportunities in the face of instability, entrenched corruption and mismanagement of finances. Although there are no clear numbers, many estimates say that more people live abroad than in the small country itself, with about 6.5 million people living, including Lebanese and refugees.
Lebanese abroad were allowed to vote for the first time in 2018 under a new election law that also provided for the addition of six new seats in parliament in the 2022 elections to replace the diaspora. However, many independent political parties and foreigners disagreed with the addition, arguing that it was a way to isolate the diaspora from local constituencies. Last month, deputies rejected the addition of those six seats, which means that foreigners will vote in May in favor of the existing 128 seats.
In October 2019, mass protests spread throughout Lebanon against an elite authority of sectarian parties and private sector friends who had held the country for several decades. Lebanese protested in dozens of cities around the world in solidarity with youth-led demonstrations from home, adding their voices to calls for renewal of the sectarian system of power-sharing in Lebanon, which sparked widespread nepotism.
Since then, the crisis has deepened even further, as Lebanon’s local currency has lost about 90 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar. About three-quarters of the population live in poverty, when there is no viable social program, they rely on charity and support.
Anger against the ruling elite reached new levels in August 2020, when a massive explosion in the port of Beirut devastated several neighborhoods in the capital, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands. Lebanese abroad organized numerous charity fundraisers to help local aid groups to help families struggling to secure medicines, heating and rent.
Saad said he and his friends have been encouraged to support independent candidates who have pledged to challenge the status quo for the past two years.
“We all came together for once, to have a change and to want a better future,” Saad explained. “Maybe I realized that these elections would be different.”
And it has been taken into account by independent political forces.
Mark Daou is a candidate for the Chouf-Aley mountainous area on behalf of Taqaddom, which created a party he describes as “progressive” and “social democratic”.
He says participation in diaspora registration was a promising development and reflected greater excitement among voters in Lebanon.
“We have been able to contact several Lebanese, but they have actually contacted us, and that is even better,” Daou told Al Jazeera by phone as he was on his way to France on Friday after a meeting with Lebanese living in Germany. “They asked us,‘ Are you going for that? We should sign up [to vote]? “
Power sharing system
Edy Semaan left Lebanon in 2017 for her master’s degree in the United States and is currently working as a communications specialist in Washington, DC. He did not vote in the last Lebanese elections four years ago, but this time he plans to take time off work and return home early to support the campaigns of independent parties looking to vote.
“I’m a supporter of the thawra [revolution]”Semaan told Al Jazeera proudly.
However, he admitted that he did not expect much revision from parliament, citing the financial power of government parties and the clientele network across eleven countries. of which they have become financial patrons.
“I don’t think the diaspora will make much of a difference this election season, but I do think it will help bring some new faces to parliament,” Semaan said, arguing that ending Lebanon’s “deep corruption” will take years.
Ibrahim Halawi, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the State, the independent party that announced it would take part in the vote last week, affirmed that there is no ‘diaspora’.
“It completely eliminates the long-term existence of the sectarian organization between the diaspora,” Al Jazeera said.
For his part, Daou said he expected independent political parties and opposition groups to get “10 to 20 percent” of the parliamentary seats.
On paper, that seems like a trivial part. But the truth is that it could be a major breakthrough, with the sectarian power-sharing system in Lebanon allocating seats to different sects in different constituencies, which has been a major obstacle for independent candidates.
As a result, building an electoral base for a constituency is not only about bringing in the most qualified and suitable candidate, but also finding similar people from certain sects in their constituencies.
Lebanese elite authorities, from the Shiite-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah to Iran to the Christian-backed Lebanese Forces, have long taken advantage of this special system of power-sharing to maintain political strongholds in parts of the country.
However, anti-organization movements and political parties have constantly tried to revive professional unions, trade unions and student movements. Last summer, independent political groups withdrew elections for the engineering union, one of the largest in the country.
“Fight to share losses”
Parliamentary elections are coming at a crucial time for Lebanon, which is short of money.
The current government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati faces several obstacles to getting the country back on track. He has prioritized resuming talks with the International Monetary Fund to reach a bailout plan, which would unlock billions of dollars in loans and financial aid.
While the country’s central bank and commercial banks are lobbying the government to ensure that the recovery plan does not carry too much of a burden, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty Olivier De Schutter has criticized the role they have recently acknowledged. crisis, due to their poor practices and the management of deposit savings.
With that in mind, Halawi, a Citizen in a State, said some new legislators will also be able to back down against the impact of the country’s broken financial system and ensure that the millions of Lebanese already hit have no additional financial burden. in the recovery phase.
“It’s a struggle to distribute losses,” he said.
“This is, historically, the time when society should claim universal health and education as a right. This is when the banks and the crooked elite are at their weakest. We have to work hard to get what we want. ”
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