Lebanon shuns women and Future Movement
Female candidates made paltry gains in the parliamentary elections while PM Saad Hariri’s party lost a third of its seats
Lebanon’s parliament has some new faces, including a TV presenter, after the results of this month’s elections were confirmed yesterday.
The parliamentary elections on Sunday capped a longer-than-expected wait for polls, the last which were held in 2009. The inaugural meeting of the incoming parliament is scheduled for May 20.
Most parties retained about the same number of seats. But a disappointment for many Lebanese was the modest increase in women representatives – rising from just four to six, less than 5 per cent of the 128-member chamber.
There was a record number of female candidates but most ran as independents rather than with established parties and could not grab enough support for a major breakthrough.
Among those newly elected was Paula Yacoubian, 42, a news presenter and journalist who ran on a Civil Society ticket. Other female candidates were disappointed.
“I was hoping to have more women in parliament,” said Jessica Azar, who ran for the Lebanese Forces, a party led by the Christian militia leader Samir Geagea. Mr Geagea was imprisoned for 11 years in 1994, four years after the civil war.
The party provided the biggest surprise in the election, almost doubling its seats from eight to 15.
Mr Geagea is an outspoken critic of Syrian influence in Lebanon and is in favour of disarming Hezbollah, the only Lebanese party that still maintains an armed militia.
“He knows what people want,” Ms Azar said. “The campaign was very straight and to the point.”
The vote was not without controversy. Mr Geagea, who, despite leading the party is not an member of parliament and is represented by his wife, said there had been ballot boxes that were “not sealed with red wax and did not contain official signed records”.
Without mentioning Hezbollah by name, Mr Geagea called on the Lebanese Interior Ministry to intervene and investigate.
It briefly looked as though seven women might win seats, but Joumana Haddad, a feminist author and journalist, declared victory based on an unofficial count before being told the next morning she had not been elected.
Her supporters protested outside the Ministry of Interior on Monday, but no official information was released yesterday regarding her request for a recount. Ms Haddad did not respond to a request for comment.
Three of the women elected were running with the Future Movement, which remained the standard bearer for Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim community.
Among them were Bahia Hariri, an MP since 1992, sister of assassinated prime minister Rafik Hariri and the aunt of Prime Minister and Future Movement leader, Saad Hariri.
Ms Hariri will be joined by Roula Tabsh from Beirut and Dima Jamali of Tripoli – the first time Lebanon’s second city has been represented by a woman in parliament.
It was Future Movement that suffered the biggest reverse, losing a third of its seats.
Future’s chief rival, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, retained 14 seats for members of its party but combined with allied parties and some independents, it could now control a majority of votes in parliament.
Hezbollah’s powerful position in Lebanon reflects Iran’s regional ascendancy through Iraq and Syria and all the way to Beirut.
It is classified as a terrorist group by the US and is an enemy of neighbouring Israel.
Israeli politicians have already expressed alarm, with Education Minister Naftali Bennett tweeting that Lebanon now equals Hezbollah.
In contrast, a senior Iranian official yesterday hailed the “victory” of Hezbollah as a success in the “fight against Israel” and the US, the state broadcaster reported.
“The Lebanese people and their representatives, Hezbollah and the other resistance groups, scored this victory in the fight against Israel and its allies, including the US,” said Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Hezbollah is the main partner in Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israeli and US interests in the Middle East.
“The strength of the resistance front will be considerably reinforced in the world” after Lebanon’s election and Iraq’s polls on Saturday, Mr Velayati said.
In Beirut, Mr Hariri said his Future Party had retained 21 seats in parliament, down from 33.
“We were betting on a better result, this is true,” he said.
He later received the UAE ambassador to Lebanon, Hamad Al Shamsi, and the Saudi Charge d’Affaires in Beirut, Walid Al Bukhari.
“We wanted to be the first to congratulate Prime Minister Hariri on his victory in the parliamentary elections, and we also stressed the depth of our relations with Lebanon,” Mr Al Bukhari said afterwards.