In the Lebanese municipal elections … the heart of the coexistence crisis

While many Lebanese, along with their brothers and neighbors, are focused on major national and regional threats, a considerable segment of the Lebanese population is currently obsessing over a more trivial side story … an issue that may seem insignificant in comparison to the existential threats looming over the Levant.

Next month, Lebanon is set to hold municipal elections. From the capital Beirut to the smallest and most remote villages, an electoral fever is being felt that, at least locally and temporarily, offers respite from the country’s crushing economic conditions and the worrying security situation.

The deeply rooted tribalism of the Lebanese is pulling off the mask of “coexistence” from the faces of both men and women. It exposes the knack of the Lebanese — shared by the other peoples of the Levant — for masking their religious, sectarian, tribal and familial divisions and then “wrapping” them with claims of openness and tolerance.

The Lebanese, along with their fellow Levantines (especially those who, for decades, preached and postured about liberation, brotherhood and progressiveness), might have once believed in the slogans they raised; some even died for them.

Maybe. Those who are still with us today know that you cannot fight your nature and that each of them has a sectarian identity that rises to the surface at the first provocation, justifying its backwardness whenever fear strikes.

Many apparently liberal and progressive slogans have been embraced by enlightened communities in our region since the late Ottoman period, when the constitutional movement and other movements advocating religious and social reform rose to the fore. And they remained prevalent under the global systems that emerged after the world wars and then the Cold War.

With the return of unipolarity, the appeal of liberalism and the credibility of progressivism began to decline

Eyad Abu Shakra

However, with the return of unipolarity, as Washington became the world’s dominant player, and with several models of independent governance having failed, the appeal of liberalism and the credibility of progressivism began to decline. This decline was first seen in the so-called Third World, which suffered under the weight of radical military and hereditary regimes, and it ultimately led us to the rise of the hard right, first with the monetarist right and then its racist iterations in Europe and the US.

In truth, the scourge of tribalism is a key feature of our social and political heritage, not a bug. Islam was quick to recognize and firmly denounce it. Nonetheless, politicians found ways to circumvent this religious taboo, cloaking their tribal and clannish chauvinism in the garb of religion, thereby sectarianizing the faith and even fueling sedition.

And now, as political storms come to the Arab world from every direction, our societies stand helpless as they fail to contain the damage. The prudent among us know that formidable impediments stand in the way of rooting it out altogether.

In the Arab world (especially in the Levant) we have become powerless in the face of Israel’s escalation. We can do nothing to stand in the way of further strategic breakthroughs and the bitter truth is that we have always been in this situation — even when our “natural immunity” was stronger than it is today, when the world was more sympathetic to our cause and when the alignment between the American right and the Israeli right was less explicit, less complementary and less profound.

To our misfortune, there is now an almost unanimous consensus among global political commentators from across the spectrum: it is untenable to count on an “international community,” to take it seriously or await meaningful actions on its part. This so-called international community that, at one point in time, had the capacity to curb excesses here and impose a compromise solution there has collapsed. Indeed, in many of the states that were once its most powerful proponents, we see openly racist forces brazenly displaying every form of prejudice, hatred, racism and exclusion.

But back to Lebanon and its local elections.

In recent weeks, debates have intensified around the elections in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital and its largest city by far. A substantial segment of the capital’s Christians fear that the dominant Sunni Muslim vote (Sunnis being the largest sectarian community in the city) will overwhelm and marginalize the Christian representation.

It is important to note that, unlike the parliamentary electoral process, no preassigned quotas for sects are allocated in municipal elections. This applies to every locality, from the major cities down to the smallest villages, where kinship comes into sharp focus.

There is a camp in Lebanon that is now openly speaking about dividing Beirut’s municipal council into two

Eyad Abu Shakra

What has become increasingly clear is that there is a camp in Lebanon (which is all too comfortable with the hypocrisy of “summer and winter under the same roof”) that is now openly speaking about dividing Beirut’s municipal council into two, leaving us one with a Muslim majority and another with a Christian majority.

This partitionist proposal gives us flashbacks to the nightmare that Beirutis and the Lebanese at large experienced during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990. It also amounts to a deliberate effort to hinder viable and fair compromises regarding political representation in Lebanon.

This deeply sectarian school of thought, which — driven by self-serving and spiteful interests — has been making tactical side deals since 2006, is reverting back to the sectarian grandstanding that the Lebanese people had grown used to before the Mar Mikhael Understanding, signed that same year between the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah.

True to its double standards, this “school” has stubbornly rejected attempts to establish a senate whose members would be elected along sectarian lines (as stipulated by the Taif Agreement) and which would govern the country alongside a parliament elected on a non-sectarian basis, with “expansive decentralization” implemented in parallel.

It is worth noting that, for a long time, the Free Patriotic Movement endorsed the proposal for an “Orthodox Electoral Law,” which would allow each sect to elect its own members of parliament, while the Shiite duo (Hezbollah and Amal) has backed the proposal for a single electoral district. Neither of them, however, supports combining the two proposals: applying the orthodox law to senate elections and the single district model to parliamentary elections.

As a result, the intersecting tactical interests of these two sectarian factions, both of which are intent on monopolizing the representation of their sect, came together to veto the only realistic and constitutional solution that could offer fair representation and facilitate inclusion. Indeed, this is part of their broader approach of rejecting any effort to reinforce genuine coexistence and avoid reliance on foreign backers.

The upcoming municipal elections might be a minor issue, but they reflect a much larger and far more painful state of affairs.

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published. X: @eyad1949