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Do we Need a Lebanese Senate ?

Posted on by Mustapha

Elias Muhanna (a.k.a Q.N.) on why Lebanon needs an upper chamber in parliament:

The classical benefits are in a country like Lebanon where you have minorities that are construed as confessional, you have a weak center and communities that are concerned about the loss of their freedoms, their ways of life. The idea is that the senate provides a check against all of that. You basically open up the Parliament so that it’s one person one vote so it’s equal suffrage across the country. [...] Anything that bares on confessional issues [has] to be passed through the senate as well. So that way every community no matter how small has a say in the affairs and destiny of the country.

This is great in theory but there’s a big catch: As the standoff between PM Mikati and the FPM demonstrates, the sectarian problem in Lebanon is not simply one of representation, but also one of patronage. The Various sectarian zaims want to have their people represented in the official bureaucracy.

Put another way, imagine an extreme situation of one-man-one-vote suffrage that results in a parliament of 100 Muslims and 28 Christians. The question to ask is: If a Shiaa block has 50 MPs and the Druze only have 5, can you make an argument for equal quotas for the Druze and Shiaas in the high posts of government, even if they’re equally represented in the Senate?

Besides, we already have a sort of defacto Senate. These are the various religious bodies (the council of Maronite Bishops, the higher Shiite council, Dar el Fatwa..etc) which traditionally get up in arms and mobilize the faithful whenever an issue is perceived to threaten the influence of their faith.

In Iran, Arab Spring Propaganda Backfires

Posted on by Mustapha

Fascinating report from Robert Worth:

It was meant to be a crowning moment in which Iran put its own Islamic stamp on the Arab Spring [...] As delegates flooded into a vast auditorium next to a space needle in western Tehran, a screen showed images of the Iranian revolution in 1979, morphing seamlessly into footage of young Arab protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen.

But there was a catch. No one was invited from Syria [...] That inconvenient truth soon marred the whole script. As the conference began, a young man in the audience held up a sign with the word “SYRIA?” written in English. Applause burst out in the crowd, followed by boos.

I would Imagine the same would happen if Saudi Arabia attempted to organize such an event and didn’t invite anyone from Bahrain. But Unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia never pretended to be a supporter of the oppressed and a champion of democracy. That Iranian Hypocrisy is at the heart of why its influence is diminishing today..

❊ The Predictable, Silly and Insanely Pointless Spectacle Between P.M. Mikati and the FPM

Posted on by Mustapha

— Some distance is good –

They will eventually kiss, make up and put their daggers behind their backs again, but the flare-out last night between Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Minister Gebran Bassil revealed once more the depth of tension and enmity that exists between these two parties.

It all happened when Prime Minister Mikati nominated A Christian judge to head a disciplinary body that traditionally reports to the Prime Minister. Since it is a Christian position, PM Mikati decided to let President Michel Sleiman file a nominee, and so Judge Elie Bekh’azi was proposed.

Minister Gebran Bassil then asked to put that nomination on hold, until he can find out if M.P. Michel Aoun blesses it. Mr. Miqati’s reaction to that took everyone by surprise:

I feel that there is insistence on blocking everything to disrupt the government’s work and you bear the responsibility and no one else. This I cannot accept. It is now clear to everybody who is blocking the work of the government and this will no longer be tolerated

Then, in a logic that can only be described as surrealistic, he decided to suspend the government’s work in protest against the FPM’s suspension of the government’s work, claiming till the very end that this is the only constructive thing to do.

But then Minister Bassil decided to double down and play nasty sectarian politics:

A certain group of Lebanese has gotten used to treating another group badly, that won’t happen on our watch and we will change this habit and restore balance to the council of Ministers.

Translation: Christians will no longer accept Sunni dominance, and the FPM will make sure to restore Christians back to their rightful position in the government.

This standoff between a weak Prime Minister and a cocky and aggressive party is a silly spectacle, but it is also pointless. Because in the end Hezbollah, the real power behind this government, will make sure that everyone gets back in line. The party of God will first allow this conflict to play out a bit, since a public fight between these two is politically beneficial for both. But in the end things will go back to where they were before last night.

Getting Ready for the Smoking Ban

Posted on by Mustapha

Many restaurants and coffee shops are not waiting for the official smoking ban to start and have already began a no-smoking policy. Here’s the encouraging news:

despite some restaurants’ concerns that the impending law could hurt business, several establishments with non-smoking policies have reported an upsurge in lunch and dinner guests.

But this is not an argument for laissez-faire. Those establishments are only doing well because they’re alone in serving the significant market of non-smokers. But once the law starts being implemented, a strict blanket ban is necessary because the cheaters (those who will allow smoking) will be rewarded at the expense of the law abiders.

Meanwhile, tobacco companies are themselves trying to cheat..

Iran Launches Spanish Language Satellite TV Channel

Posted on by Mustapha

The Washington Post:

Hispan TV — the first Spanish-language channel airing from the Middle East — will broadcast news, documentaries, movies and Iranian films 24 hours a day. [...] “The new channel will limit the ground for supremacy of dominance seekers,” Ahmadinejad said during a Tehran ceremony marking the inauguration. “It will be a means for better ties between people and governments of Iran and Spanish-speaking nations.”

I checked out their website and watched some of the programs. Production is not bad and the presenters are actual Spanish speakers, not locals who spoke Spanish with an accent. But it all feels so pointless..

❊ Historical Dissociation

Posted on by Mustapha

– Can you erase one of the world’s most documented events from history? –

Culture Minister Gaby Layyoun on the inclusion of the phrase “Cedar revolution” in Lebanese history books:

We cannot keep such a phrase in the curriculum … [It] is sensitive to many in the country and it might create problems between people

Let’s call that the “dissociation” school of historical revisionism. Shying away from any historical detail that might cause awkward feelings in people living in the present. Who cares if half the Lebanese took to the street if the other half finds that fact inconvenient? By that standard world war II should be removed from German history books and the entire slavery chapter should be scraped from American ones.

Defenders of Mr. Layyoun say that the debate is simply about semantics, that the revolution itself is thoroughly discussed in the book, but not its American-made moniker. But to me the interesting question is this: If history is always written by the victors, how does a country with “no victors and no vanquished” write its history?

The problem with Mr. Layyoun’s statement is not that it is a egregious distortion of events (after all, distortions like this happen all the time when victors write history books). The problem is one of overreach and overconfidence: An assumption by one party that its opponents have no life left in them, and that they can simply be erased away.

If Mr. Layyoun had truly read the history of Lebanon, he would not have made such a rookie mistake.