PROTESTERS IN LEBANON PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
▶ Civil groups and cross-sectarian parties hold talks about how to achieve good governance as demonstrators refuse to put their faith in political class
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have taken to the streets since October 17 to express their anger at the country’s leaders, raising the cedar flag in a show of national pride.
About 60 civil society groups and cross-sectarian parties that mobilised in the early days of the nationwide anti-government demonstrations are now looking to the country’s future.
The groups, which include political movements and civil society organisations that sprang up during protests in 2015 sparked by Lebanon’s waste crisis, have met in hotels in Beirut to form a united front able to further the demands of protesters.
The resignation of Saad Hariri as prime minister last Tuesday was described as the first victory of the protest movement.
But the groups are aware of the need to look past this milestone to what comes next, given that no other government figures, such as President Michel Aoun or the Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri, seem likely to step down.
The process to designate a new prime minister is set to be the next significant step for the protesters.
Mr Aoun must hold binding consultations with political parties to nominate a new prime minister-designate, who will then have to form a cabinet that receives the approval of parliament.
Until then, Lebanon is without a functioning government.
Traditional political parties have suggested forming a techno-political government with a mandate to fix poor public services and Lebanon’s dire economic situation.
But the protesters, who have rallied behind the chant “all of them means all of them”, are demanding that all members of the country’s traditional political class resign. Demonstrators are unlikely to accept a transitional government with Mr Hariri at its helm, as has been suggested.
“Why should we allow them to continue after they have proven themselves incapable of doing the work they were appointed to do?” asked Rania Masri, a representative of cross-sectarian party Citizens within a State.
But in a country where political divisions run deep, rejecting the traditional establishment is easier than agreeing on an alternative.
“We know where we want to go, we just don’t know how and who,” said Salim Adib, a professor of community medicine at the American University of Beirut and member of Sabaa, another cross-sectarian party.
From his party’s booth, one of many to spring up in Martyrs’ Square since the protests began, Mr Adib told The National that the groups taking part in discussions have found common ground on forming a technical administration.
This, they say, should be comprised of independent, unimpeachable experts.
A possible candidate for prime minister is Yasser Akkaoui, a well-known corporate governance activist. He is an expert in governance in the Middle East, a committee member of Human Rights Watch and editor-in-chief of Lebanese newspaper Executive Magazine.
While the groups can pass Mr Akkaoui’s name on to Mr Aoun, there is no legal requirement for the president to heed their recommendation. Only his talks with the main political parties are binding. Mr Aoun has offered to meet representatives of the protesters, but there is no leadership who can visit his office.
Protesters have remained on the streets after Mr Hariri stood down, intent on keeping the pressure on political parties and the president to meet their demands.
In Martyrs’ Square, public debates are being held regularly to discuss the way ahead.
Some booths provide legal and psychological support, while others are distributing food, water and copies of the Lebanese constitution.
A flurry of WhatsApp groups have been set up as a way for protesters to co-ordinate. An Instagram account and even an app have been launched to co-ordinate activities.
One umbrella group that unites 36 civil society actors, known as the Co-ordination Entity of the Revolution, listed the drafting a new, nonsectarian electoral law and a general election among the main demands of protesters.
The 1989 Taif Agreement ended the civil war and rebalanced power-sharing quotas between religious sects to help stabilise the country at that time. Under the agreement, only the first election after the conflict was to be run on a sectarian basis before a non-religious electoral law was agreed. But the law, which was agreed in 2017, is still sectarian.
Many groups are pledging to break from this system and push for a secular electoral law as the cornerstone of a new, nonsectarian state.
Another pressing demand is the restitution of public funds allegedly embezzled by members of the political establishment, which many protesters believe would lift Lebanon’s ailing economy.
This is a cause that many political parties across the spectrum claim to champion.
A minister was even appointed by cabinet to combat corruption but they were unable to carry out his task effectively due to political interests.
Gina Chammas, a former president of the Lebanese Association of Certified Public Accountants and head of The American Anti-Corruption Institute, is among the experts discussing ways in which a new government could enforce accountability.
Ms Chammas says there are plans to form a government body to investigate corruption allegations.
“We will appoint experts in collecting evidence on the actions and networks of those accused of corruption,” she told The National.
There have long been accusations that international organisations were complicit in a lack of transparency in development projects. Several internationally funded infrastructure projects, from water treatment to waste-sorting plants, have been built but never opened, or were closed not long after the ribbons were cut.
Ms Chammas said corruption investigations would not spare international organisations, including the UN and the World Bank.
“No one will get away with it,” she said.
Most non-profit arts organisations exist to provide a service to the public, creating programming that attempts to interact and intersect with civic concerns on a cultural, social and political level. As anti-government protests in Lebanon have grown, becoming the largest seen in the country’s recent history, local arts organisations have been forced to reflect on their role in an uprising that stands for many of the rights they habitually champion – freedom of choice, freedom of expression and an end to corruption and sectarianism.
In a display of unity, the majority of the country’s most significant cultural institutions have come out publicly in support of the protests, concluding that for the moment, their goals can be better served in the streets than in theatres, museums and galleries.
Ashkal Alwan, one of the country’s most influential non-profit arts organisations, has played a key role in directing the cultural sector’s response to the protests. The first wave of anti-government demonstrations, which began on Thursday, October 17, coincided with the launch of the eighth Home Works, Ashkal Alwan’s roughly triennial forum on cultural practices. Home Works 8 was due to run for 10 days and include exhibitions, performances, readings, lectures and film screenings, but the opening weekend’s events were postponed indefinitely at the 11th hour after the eruption of protests. Four days later, as the significance of the protests became clear, Ashkal Alwan issued a statement announcing that it did not regret its decision to essentially cancel the forum in favour of supporting the ongoing demonstrations and “a momentum that should be seized at any cost”.
“The launch of this edition of Home Works has once again been overwhelmed by the very forces that had initially led to its inception in 2001,” the statement reads. “Artistic and cultural institutions and initiatives are in no way isolated from broader civic, political, economic and ideological contexts, but rather shaped as a result of and in response to historical events and their repercussions.”
Christine Tohme, founding director of Ashkal Alwan, launched Home Works “to respond to timely, urgent questions and concerns”, she tells
The National. “To this day, it remains driven by a need to produce critical discourses and aesthetic propositions able to tackle broader socio-political developments occurring in the region. This is far from being the first time Home Works forum and its programmes have been disrupted, modified or postponed due to political events.”
The first forum coincided with the beginning of the Second Intifada in Palestine in April 2002. The second, in 2003, was delayed by six months due to the US invasion of Iraq. The third, in 2005, was again delayed by six months due to the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The fourth was disrupted by violent street battles between Hezbollah and Future Movement militiamen in Beirut in 2008, while the fifth, two years later, was delayed not due to political unrest, but to the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which disrupted flights worldwide. Finally, on the eve of the last forum, in 2015, two suicide bombings in the south of Beirut left 43 civilians dead, a day before major terrorist attacks in Paris.
“We’ve become accustomed to political instabilities inviting themselves to unfold during or right before the forum, and they’re now inherently intertwined with Ashkal Alwan’s own history as an institution,” says Tohme.
In the wake of Ashkal Alwan’s announcement, more than a dozen Lebanese cultural institutions met to discuss the protests and formulate
a unified response. Last week, they issued a joint statement announcing an open-ended strike “in solidarity with and participation in the popular uprisings taking place across Lebanon against the current systems of power”.
Fifteen of the country’s most significant arts and culture organisations, including Ashkal Alwan, the Arab Image Foundation, Sursock Museum and Beirut Art Centre, signed the initial statement. Within hours, a further 15 signatories had joined the strike. More than 40 organisations have now endorsed the communal statement, which stresses their commitment to supporting the rights of their employees to join the ongoing demonstrations, amid reports that some Lebanese citizens had been illegally dismissed from their jobs for attending the protests.
“Arts and culture are an integral part of every society, and the expanded space of creative and critical thought is imperative in times of upheaval,” the statement says. “While on strike, we are connecting with colleagues across sectors and groups to formulate together what we can contribute to the movement. We are part of a national, regional and global desire to dream, think, fight for, enact and embody radical imaginations leading to structural and systemic change.”
As protests have continued, the cultural landscape in Lebanon has continued to shift to accommodate them. In recent days, the organisers of Beirut
Art Film Festival, which was scheduled to run throughout November, announced its indefinite postponement in light of developments “that we hope will bring to Lebanon better times” and the Salon du Livre, a French book fair due to run from Friday to Sunday November 8 to 17, was cancelled.
The strong show of support from cultural institutions demonstrates that art does not exist in a vacuum. Home Works 8 called on participants “to partake in acts of collective world-building, suggesting pathways to re-imagine social relations as they currently stand”. The protests in Lebanon can be seen as a physical manifestation of the frustrations that precipitated this theme.
The protests have themselves become an act of collective world-building, in which tens of thousands of citizens have come together to demand an alternative future for Lebanon, one free from corruption, cronyism and sectarianism. “We chose to explore the potentialities of collective world-building for this forum as a reflection on the current state of affairs,” explains Tohme.
“Regionally, and to a certain extent globally, we had reached a political and imaginative deadlock, far from the inspirational sparks of 2011. Something was festering and we wished to propose the notion of ‘world-building’ as a radical way out.
“We wanted to conceive a platform through which artists, thinkers and cultural practitioners could echo aesthetic and political ideas able to denounce and disrupt counter-revolutionary discourses and economies. The streets of Lebanon have caught up on these urgencies, which is why we chose instead to indefinitely postpone our activities and join.”
As the demonstrations continue, despite increasing incidences of violence against protesters, Lebanon’s cultural institutions have succeeded in setting aside their individual concerns and programmes to prioritise the public will. The significance of their role will become clearer in the future as they tackle whatever lies in the wake of the uprising.
Home Works 8, at least, is destined never to take the form it was intended to have taken before the uprising. “It’s too soon to assess whether we’ll be holding Home Works 8 anytime soon,” says Tohme, “but when that happens, it will surely shift its programming to respond directly to our local context.” Like Lebanon, it is destined to be irrevocably changed.
We’ve become accustomed to political instabilities inviting themselves to unfold during or right before the forum, and they’re now inherently intertwined with Ashkal Alwan’s own history as an institution