Commentary
MSM Fails Again: Factually incorrect Propaganda Printed in the Washington Post
Source : Lebanese Political Journal
If you want to become uninformed about Lebanon, read Annia Ciezadlo’s piece “Lebanon’s Election: Free but Not Fair” in Sunday’s Washington Post. And where is that main stream media (MSM) “safeguard” that makes it so much better than blogs?
I was originally going to post a response, but the factual errors occur in every paragraph. Enumerating them is the best way to manifest the failures.
Here are factual transgressions:
First:
“This inequality [between sects] dates back to 1943, when the French handed Lebanon over to the country’s French-speaking Maronite Christian elite and founded what is called the confessional system, with parliamentary and executive offices parceled out among the major religious sects.”
This “background” sentence is so filled with errors I will break it apart in pieces.
The French didn’t create the confessional system. In fact, they inherited it. Why would a fiercely Republican government set up such an odd system? They didn’t do it in their colonies in Martinique, Algeria, or Senegal? Why was this system created in Lebanon?
Because they did not create it. In fact, if you want to blame anyone for confessionalism, blame the Ottoman’s, which forced the Maronites and Druze into agreement during the mutasarifiyya. The French went with what was the precedent on the ground because they didn’t have a better system to put in place when they took over in 1920.
Second flaw in that sentence: the French handed Lebanon over? Uhhh, which French were those? The Vichy French held on to Lebanon with all their might. Remember, 1943 was a period during which France wasn’t even an operative country. Were they in any position to hands things in any direct?
The Lebanese won their independence with British aid. Let us not forget good General Spears who came roaring into this country on an anti-Vichy, anti-French colonist campaign. The British general was as much a partisan for a free Lebanon as anyone else, and he had to fight for it.
Why, then, were three of our national leaders thrown into prison by the French, with the fourth escaping only because he was in the Kit Kat Club when the goons came for him?
The French threw our first Maronite President Bechara Khoury into jail. They didn’t hand him a thing.
Third flaw: those “executive parcels” were a creation of our founding fathers Bechara Khoury and Riad al-Solh when they forged the National Pact. Let’s take a look at the French period. Maronite leader Emile Edde fulfilled every position possible, even occupying the office of Speaker of Parliament. Obviously, the French were not the ones who assigned the Speakership to a Shia.
Fourth flaw: “French-speaking Maronite elite.” Hmmm… Riad al-Solh probably spoke French and, as a Sunni, was definitely not Maronite. The French merely empowered families that had already occupied positions of power in Lebanon. Some, like Edde, moved to grand positions through currying favor. Edde was much closer to the French than Khoury. Wait, when did Emile Edde become President? Oh, that’s right. He never did.
Second: “Lebanon’s election law creates a byzantine web of provinces and districts, exquisitely gerrymandered to give each of 18 sects a certain number of seats in parliament.”
The election law didn’t create those provinces and districts. One could make a case for the mohafaza of Nabatiyeh being a creation, but our qadaa’ have pretty deep historical roots.
Do all the 18 sects get seats? I haven’t seen many Jewish, Kurdish, or Bahai seats recently.
And who did that gerrymandering? Was it those evil, anti-Shia Maronites, or friendly, democracy loving Syrian Brigadier Ghazi Kanaan whose aim in life it was to enfranchise Lebanese voters?
Third false statement:
“The number of seats each sect gets bears little relation to its current weight in the population.”
She goofed here as well. The Taef Accord – Pact of National Understanding that effectively ended the civil war and began Syrian reign – was not only about demographic factors. They didn’t take a census. They assumed that Muslims and Christians deserve an equal share of seats in Parliament. Take a look at Joseph Maila’s study on the document from the early nineties.
Fourth false statement:
“The U.S. State Department estimates Lebanon’s population at about 70 percent Muslim and 23 percent Christian. (Estimates vary, because Lebanon hasn’t held a census in 73 years, but few question that Muslims are a majority, with Shiites outweighing Sunnis. )”
Yikes! If we are to believe the statement from the third fallacy about “current weight”, then the government must know how many of each sect are living in Lebanon. But now she admits that we don’t know, so it’s best to go with what the State Department says, even if it goes against the CIA’s estimates of roughly 60% Muslim to 40% Christian.
And if the statistics are true, then we need to take a lot of seats away from Armenians and Druze, and give them to Greek Catholics and Shia (oh, those who spurn birth control). But Ciezadlo doesn’t want to target the Druze, categorized as Muslim in the Lebanese equation.
Fifth:
“During the last election, in 2000, politicians running in the primarily Muslim south had to get three times as many votes to win a seat as those running in some Christian areas.”
Yeah, that’s right. That’s because the district was intentionally made bigger to limit independent candidates and ensure a Hezbollah/Amal victory. Even Christians in the South needed significantly more votes than “those running in some Christian areas.”
Let’s not compare one voting district to another when they operate according to vastly different laws. And on a numbers level alone, that’s like noting that it took Mayor Daley of Chicago more votes to get elected than the Mayor of Cheboygan. Isn’t it obvious.
Let’s look at Christian versus Christian, and Shia versus Shia. A Christian or Shia running in the South or Bekaa would need significantly more votes to win than a Christian or Shia in Jbeil. That’s because the Christians in Jbeil and in the South are not fully franchised – for different reasons, not because the Shia are limited.
The law in Mount Lebanon is meant to limit Christian power while giving the Druze and Shia more. The law in the South is meant to limit Christian power, while giving the Shia inordinate amount of power. Certain districts in Lebanon have major sectarian biases. In fact, the only muhafaza in Lebanon that has a slightly even sectarian playing field is the North. The South is dominated by Shia and Mount Lebanon is dominated by Christians.
By having the South vote en masse, the Shia are super-empowered to elect the candidates of all sects running in the South. If the law was written the same way in Mount Lebanon, then Christians would be super-empowered to choose all the seats, including those for the Shia and Druze.
That would absolutely destroy any Druze base of power. Those “poor” people in Dahiye Ciezadlo mentions would never be able to elect a Hezbollah representative because the Christians would over rule them.
That is the difference betweem the two districts. Compared to the South, the Christians are without power. Voting on a small scale means that localities get to choose their leadership, which is what the Christians are asking for nationwide. That means that the Shia in Dahiye get to vote for their own candidates and the Christians in the South get to vote for their own people.
To compare the Lebanese system to the American: Voting in Mount Lebanon is like voting according to the typical congressional district. Voters in New York vote for their Congressman based on their local district. Although New York is a blue state and Democrats in NYC outnumber Republicans 2:1, members of both parties are elected to represent different communities in Congress. Upstate voters and Long Island voters get their Republican Reps like Peter King and Tom Reynolds, while NYC gets Charlie Rangel, Nydia Velazquez, and Gary Ackerman.
The areas in South Lebanon would be a distortion of this sort: everyone in Texas votes en masse for all the representatives. Given the number of Republicans in the entire state of Texas, Democrats in Houston and Austin would not stand a chance. Every person in Houston might vote against the person elected to represent them in Congress, but if that person gets the most votes statewide, he wins.
Now, in the next election make New York voters elect their representatives in the usual way giving seats to both parties and allow Texas to vote an entirely Republican slate where the elected officials only nominally represent their constituents. The New Yorkers will want to implement Texas style measures to compete with Texas on the national level.
But Lebanese Christians can’t do that because it means the absolute disenfranchisement of an influential sect, the Druze.
Sixth fallacy:
“Another of the many ironies of the system is that Lebanon’s preeminent politician can’t ever be president; he’s barred from running for prime minister; and he isn’t even eligible to be speaker of parliament. Why? Because that politician — opposition leader Walid Jumblatt — is a Druze Muslim.”
It’s saying a lot to call Jumblatt the “preeminent politician,” but I will put this aside regardless of my previous posts.
Walid did get shafted in the Taef era. He was supposed become the head of a newly created Senate, but that Senate was never formed. In fact, it was those dirty French who originally created the Senate. But the Senate was disbanded under their watch.
Poor Walid can’t become President. But Taef effectively strips the President of all of his powers anyway. Taef says the President should serve merely as a symbol of state. Power in the Taef era is invested in the Council of Ministers, which the President does not have the power to convene or disband. He cannot vote in the body, and he must enact their edicts without any veto power.
The President is technically commander in chief of the army, but the Army is placed under the authority of the Council of ministers. The current Presidents have gained power through Syrian twists to the Taef accords. The Syrians forced the President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of Parliament to agree on the make up of the Council of Ministers, which gave the President a few chips in the influential body. The President also got his own army unit that reports only to him under Syria’s watch.
Ciezadlo is right to point out one of the flaws of confessionalism that could be fixed, interestingly enough, if we looked to the power sharing agreement forged in Iraq. But even there, we will never see a Christian Iraqi President even if the best politician is Christian because it is unconstitutional.
The current system was constructed to relieve sectarian fighting. Why push to become President if you never have the opportunity to do it? There just has to be an equilizer for Druze promotion.
Or, is there a problem? Americans love to cheer about the freedom of opportunity. They hate to see rules that make it impossible for something to ever happen. America doesn’t have any laws against Muslim presidents, but I doubt I will see one any time soon. Muslims make up around 3% of America, just under the Druze percentage in Lebanon. Is anyone in America arguing for a Muslim opportunity to become president even though it won’t happen under the present system?
Seventh fallacy:
“In Lebanon, if he [Ciezadlo’s Bush voting Lebanese friend] goes to the trouble of voting, he’ll have little alternative to Hezbollah, the armed Shiite militia, because that’s who dominates the slate in his ancestral village.”
Yeah, that’s what the Christians have been saying. The problem with the election law is not that it is biased in favor of the Christians. Fascinating that she can’t see through her own rhetoric.
Eighth fallacy:
“In the summer, when Beirut’s seaside breeze turns to a steamy blast, the Electricite du Liban stops bringing electricity to the dahiya.”
Oh, poor Dahiye, where Hezbollah makes sure that the residents never have to pay for electricity.
Regardless, Lebanon has rolling blackouts. Dahiye residents are lucky enough to get electricity throughout the year. Their brethren away from Beirut are not so lucky. The affluent Christian suburbs of Beirut suffer from more power outages than Dahiye.
Electricity generators are common sites on buildings around this country for a reason. Dahiye is not being oppressed. In fact, they are beneficiaries when it comes to electricity given their Hezbollah wasta.
Ninth:
“Enter Hezbollah — a political machine for people left out of the political system.”
How many government officials stand up for the thousands of supporters of Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Forces, and the Guardians of the Cedars (the closest equivalent to a Christian terrorist organization)? Who is the only militia leader rotting in jail? How many Hezbollah supporters are rotting in Syrian prisons and continually tortured?
Tenth:
“The party’s special status as an armed faction is the Shiites’ de facto consolation prize for being disenfranchised.”
WHAT???!!!!
How about free electricity, millions of dollars from Iran, and the power to destablize a nation in an instant?
Eleventh:
“In the dahiya and southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has become a powerful shadow government, building a network of schools, hospitals and charities.”
Yeah, Hezbollah beats up government ministers when they try to enter their areas and refuses to allow the Lebanese Army in.
When the state tried to reconstruct Dahiye under the Elissar project (see my comment from a few days ago), Hezbollah canceled the project by screaming about a bunch of sectarian conspiracies. Then they went back to their people and said, “Hey, the government won’t do anything for you, so you better be happy that we are here.”
Twelfth:
“If Bush wants to help Lebanon disarm Hezbollah peacefully — and if he wants to deserve his reputation as a liberator of the Arab world’s downtrodden Shiites — he’ll encourage Lebanon’s Christians to give up their special privileges”
Hezbollah is the party with an arsenal of rockets and unmanned drones, and the Christans are privileged?
As the last paragraph noted, Hezbollah has had a mighty hand in making sure that their community is downtrodden. Sadly, this has been a prominent characteristic of Shia leaders going back to the leaderships of the Hamade in the Bekaa and the Asad and Osseiran in the South.
Only Musa Sadr was able to get his people some true representation. Lebanese Shia Ayatollah Fadlallah, one of the greatest minds in the Arab world, has been marginalized by Syria and Hezbollah.
It is a mistake to compare Christian economic affluence and Shia poverty to relative levels of political strength.
Overall, a ridiculously atrocious article. And I barely got started.