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And more from Chibli Mallat . . .
Shortly after my last post, I received the following in my in-box, from the Mallat campaign in Lebanon. Even with the horrific toll this weekend in Iraq, and the sickening news that the Administration was willing to paint an American plane in UN colors to try to provoke an Iraqi attack to help justify the war and that neither he nor Tony Blair actually expected to find WMD in Iraq, new winds are blowing in the Middle East.
From Dreamer to ContenderEven though a national election isn’t scheduled, human-rights activist Chibli Mallat is running for president. And his chances of winning are looking better all the time.
By Stephen Glain
Newsweek
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET March 24, 2006
March 24, 2006 - Chibli Mallat, a Lebanese human-rights lawyer and activist, is campaigning as an independent for his country’s presidency. That makes him unique, for two reasons: First, in Lebanon’s highly factionalized politics, no one gets anywhere without belonging to an ethnic or religious clan. Second, there are no scheduled elections to contest. Last year’s Cedar Revolution, ignited by the killing of the Sunni political leader Rafik Hariri, may have put an end to Syria’s decades-long occupation of Lebanon, but Syrian proxy Emile Lahoud remains as the country’s president. Pro-democracy groups engaged in a so-called National Dialogue have as yet failed to hatch a plan to remove Lahoud without provoking a violent backlash from Damascus.
Nonetheless, political groups are jockeying for power, inspired in part by what they say is stiff pressure on Syria from Arab governments—in particular Saudi Arabia, which enjoyed close ties with Hariri—in favor of a peaceful transition of power in Lebanon. The 46-year-old Mallat’s own poll numbers meanwhile, indicate he has reached spoiler status. This month, Lebanon’s Maronite patriarch, the leader of the country’s largest Christian sect, gave the candidate what was interpreted by some as a passive endorsement, and the Saudi and Iranian ambassadors have requested interviews with Mallat. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Stephen Glain this week. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What are the odds that Syria will remove Lahoud anytime soon?
Chibli Mallat: Considering that everyone in the National Dialogue accepts there is a crisis in the presidency that needs to be addressed and the only way to address it is with a new president, the likelihood is much higher today than it was two months ago. You could have a new president in a week or a month.
What makes you think Lahoud’s presidency may be in jeopardy?
The Syrians will hang on to him as much as they can, but eventually they will cut their losses because Arab leaders are pressuring them to do so. It’s because of Saad Hariri [Rafik’s son and a political leader]. He is saying “I want him out,” and the Saudis will not go against him on this, though the pressure is clandestine. The atmosphere has changed to the point where the Saudis are saying, “Let’s agree on [a Lahoud successor]” rather than “let’s not stir up change in Lebanon.”
Assuming Lahoud goes and an election is scheduled, how do you rate your chances?
The [candidate] that is least objectionable to everyone involved is probably me, because while I belong to this Cedar Revolution atmosphere, I am not directly associated with or against any one camp. The patriarch came out with specifications for a best-candidate’s profile—someone young, educated, middle of the road—which was read widely to be a reference to me. Since I announced my campaign, I’ve propelled my image from innocuous dreamer to one of the contenders on the public radar. We had a poll done this week between me and [Gen. Michel] Aoun and the result was 59 percent for Aoun and 40 percent for Mallat, which is significant [considering] when I started out.
What is it about you that appeals to voters?
There is a sense of relative youth, a sense of novelty that is not available with other candidates, who are all either steeped in blood like Aoun or were in arrangements with the Syrians to be deputies of one thing or another. Most important, the political movement in Lebanon is a movement of the professional class, the middle class, and that is my profile. It is a revolt of the bankers and lawyers. To see them in the street is very unusual in Lebanon.
The leaders of the National Dialogue seem to be maneuvering to simply name a successor rather than hold an election. Wasn’t the Cedar Revolution all about the popular yearning for a pluralist democracy?
Of course. But people in this country are so tired of violence in politics they don’t see the importance of democratic competition. In democracy, there is the notion that the losers of today will be the winners of tomorrow. That alternation game is the essence of democracy, but there is a sense that Lebanon is so fragile and people are obsessed with consensus. The only practical alternative in my view is to allow the constitutional process to play itself out in the form of an election. That way, hopefully, the best person will emerge.
President George W. Bush continues to make the spread of democracy the cornerstone of his foreign policy. Does that sustain you?I support his policy wholeheartedly. We activists in the human-rights community have been calling for democracy for years, and now that the Americans are embracing it, we won’t turn back. My only request is that the policy be imposed without exemption. It is easy to attack Syria on the basis that it is not democratic, but it is important that the [United States] apply the same standards to Egypt, to push for peaceful change at the top there. That also includes Tunisia, which is an extraordinary dictatorship, and of course Israel, which is ruining the lives of millions of people under its occupation. The Bush administration must do something positive on this to show his call for freedom and democracy is not opportunistic.
Is the United States doing enough to pressure Syria to allow Lebanon full independence?
Short of sending 100,000 Marines to Damascus, my sense is the U.S. policy on Damascus is the correct one. I don’t think sanctions would be useful in any way, and in fact they’ve proved counterproductive elsewhere. The Syrians are not behaving well on a number of fronts, including in Lebanon, and that will continue. But most worryingly, what we’re seeing in Syria is that the country is going down the path of domestic violence. Every few days we hear of skirmishes and numbers of people killed. This touches a broad spectrum of the population, which is increasingly unhappy. It really has nothing to do with Lebanon, and it is bound to get worse.
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Fascinating stuff, and perhaps the most promising movement in the Middle East is the rise of civil society support in both Iran and in Lebanon for significant reform. In one sense I'm pessimistic: even as reform has been beat back in Iran, so too do Lebanon's structures mitigate against substantial reform from within. Nonetheless, while it's impossible to judge exactly the level of support for reformist politics in either Iran or Lebanon, it is fair to say that in both cases there is enough evidence to say in a rather generic manner that the level of support for reform is substantial. That's general, but that's the reality of divining poliical trends in non-democratic states (and I would term Lebanon non-democratic, even if it has elements of democracy). This points to optimism in some sense. In the two countries (three, actually, if one includes Morocco) in the Middle East in which there has been space -- albeit limited space -- for civil society ferment, the result has been substantial support for reform. In other words, limited democratic openings have opened space for support for reform, and this base can only expand if there is yet more democratic space. This is the argument for democracy -- not for its outside imposition, just for democracy -- and it seems to me there is limited evidence that it does broaden the field of possibilities. It'll be very interesting to see how things progress in these three (including Morocco, now that I thought of it) very different countries: one of which has seen substantive social rejection of the current regime (Iran), another which see substantive rejection of the political status quo (Lebanon), and another which is seeing reform directed from the top (Morocco).
April 5, 2006 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink