Electoral Observations

The polling stations closed just minutes ago, and the results probably won’t be in for another day (can you imagine counting 2.5 million votes by hand?), but so far it has been an interesting day and I would like to share some of my observations with you: - Yesterday on TV a reporter was asking some people in Jdeideh (North of Beirut/Metn) who they were going to vote for. “I’m 71 and I’ve never voted in my life,” said one guy, “and I’m surely not going to start voting now!” Most others said they would vote for ‘the one who is best for the country.’ Nobody actually named a candidate. One man said “I don’t know, I have to ask my son who we’re voting for this time.”

Business is business: On Place Sassine, flags of competing Christian parties are sold by one vendor.

- Two days ago we were in Laqlouq, in the mountains North of Beirut, where we entered a restaurant full of army and police smoking arguileh and drinking araq. They were sent to the village to guard the electoral process, and were now looking for places to eat and sleep (all 30 of them) until Election Day.

- All voters in Lebanon have to dip their thumb in ink after they have voted, except the President of the Republic. He walked out with perfectly clean hands.

Electoral posters of the opposition and independent in Beirut (third district).

- When you have to cast your vote at a polling station in a district that is very popular amongst the party you don’t like, you’d better bring your own ballot (or remember all the names in their correct spelling): my mother in law did not find a single distributer of the list she wanted to vote for in the entire neighborhood of her polling station, and we had to drive over to the office of one of her favorite parties to get the correct list. When we asked them why they weren’t distributing lists at her location, they said: "Are you kidding? Have you seen the COLOR of that neighborhood? No way can we distribute anything there!"

- When an entirely veiled woman (and I mean entirely, head to toe including the face and the hands) got to the voting station, the policeman at the door asked for her ID, checked the picture, looked at her veiled face and let her pass. I don’t know how he knew it was actually the person on the ID.

- Speaking of entirely veiled: would this woman be required to take off her gloves to dip her finger in ink?

An Electoral Bureau: a place for (in this case) Hariri supporters to gather.

- While we were waiting outside the polling station, a group of 4 ‘observers’ of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections walked up. Two of them, Lebanese girls, went inside the station, while the other two, foreigners, waited outside. A member of the most prevalent political party walked up to the policeman guarding the entrance with bags of waterbottles that he wanted to distribute inside. The policeman stopped him, but the man argued a bit, then took him aside, handed him some papers (we couldn’t see what they were) and was let in the station with his water. The observers looked on, but obviously did not speak Arabic, so they had no idea what happened. I wonder what the report will say. Something happened. It looked fishy, maybe?

Supporters of Hariri expressing their excitement across the neighborhood.

Daar gaan we dan!

Aanstaande zondag zijn de parlementsverkiezingen hier in Libanon. We worden al wekenlang doodgegooid met verkiezingsposters van elke partij, de één nog ‘creatiever’ dan de andere. Partij-programma’s zijn er nauwelijks, het gaat er alleen om iedereen te laten geloven dat jij ‘goed’ bent, dus de ander ‘fout’ – of alleen dat de ander ‘fout’ is, want dat jij goed bent staat buiten kijf. Het lijkt op dit moment een nek-aan-nek race te gaan worden: in de peilingen staan ‘overheid’ en ‘oppositie’ ieder op ongeveer 65 zetels. Iedereen moet stemmen in het district waar hij of zij geregistreerd staat, wat voor velen betekent dat ze terug moeten naar het geboortedorp van hun vader (of hun man), waar ze soms nauwelijks een idee hebben wie de kandidaten zijn.

Kandidaten kunnen zich maar in één district verkiesbaar stellen, en elk district heeft een bepaalde hoeveelheid zetels te kiezen (die dan weer onderverdeeld zijn in verschillende religieuze stromingen). Zo moet Walid bijvoorbeeld stemmen in het Derde district van Beirut, en hij moet 5 Sunnieten aankruisen op de lijst, 1 Druze, 1 ‘minderheid’, 1 Sji’iet, en 1 Grieks-Orthodox en 1 Evangelisch Christen. Hij kiest dus in totaal 10 mensen.

Het leuke is dat je je eigen stembiljet mee mag brengen. Dit is natuurlijk heerlijk fraude-gevoelig, en er staan dan ook mensen van elke partij voor het stembureau om je een voorgedrukte lijst met al hun kandidaten in handen te drukken. Of, als het eruit ziet dat je toch voor de tegenpartij gaat stemmen, de lijst me kandidaten van de tegenpartij waartussen de meest kansrijke van de eigen partij verstopt is, zodat de onoplettende kiezer die de hele lijst aankruist per ongeluk ook hun kandidaat het parlement in stemt.

Er zijn ook andere manieren om aan stemmen te komen: in sommige districten is de competitie moordend en is elke stem geld waard. Er zijn zo’n 20.000 Libanezen (dat is 700 vliegtuigen vol) uit het buitenland overgevlogen om deel te nemen aan de verkiezingen – en de meesten daarvan hebben niet voor hun eigen ticket hoeven betalen. Een vriend uit Saida (zuidelijk Libanon) zegt dat hij op Saniora (de huidige premier) gaat stemmen, omdat die het ticket van zijn broer uit Canada betaald heeft. Een andere vriend die graag oppositie wil stemmen maar in geldnood zit, zegt dat een paar honderd dollar hem daar wel vanaf kan brengen: dan gooit hij een wit papier in de stembus, of een mooie tekening.

Het belooft in ieder geval een spannende strijd te worden, en een overwinning van de ene of de andere partij zal ongetwijfeld gepaard gaan met een hele hoop geweerschoten – in de lucht van vreugde of op elkaar gericht van frustratie. We hebben in elk geval van zaterdag ochtend tot waarschijnlijk maandagavond (afhankelijk van wanneer alle stemmen geteld zijn) een curfew opgelegd gekregen, en samenscholen is verboden. Mijn lerares Arabisch raadde me aan een stapel boeken en films en een grote hoeveelheid junkfood in huis te halen om de dagen door te komen. Dat zullen we maar doen dan.

They did it; They did it not; They did it...?

I heard a lot of fireworks and shooting in the air tonight, so I thought one politician or another must have given yet another brilliant speech and I checked the news to see who it was. There was no mention of a speech – instead I found this: apparently there is evidence that Hezbollah was behind the murder of Rafiq Hariri in February 2005.

If that’s true, things might get ugly very, very soon.

One week late? Or sixty-one years?

Last week was the commemoration of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was in full swing – more than 400 villages were destroyed, 700.000 people were made refugees and thousands of acres of land were confiscated. Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, wants us all to forget what happened 61 years ago, so he has proposed a law to criminalize public remembrance of the anniversary of the Nakba. In January this year, I saw the following image at a demonstration against the war on Gaza:

(Palestinian land: red; Israeli land: grey.)

Already I have no words for this situation, and know even less what to say when people are no longer even allowed to remember how it came to this. I suggest you visit here and here and here and read stories like this, to know and not to forget.

If anybody has good links or suggestions for books and articles; please leave them in the comments.

I hadn't heard that one before

“When there are elections in Holland, who do you vote for? I mean, why?” asked my slightly inebriated friend.“I usually vote for the party with the best program,” I said, “and then I chose the candidate I prefer.” “Ah yes…” he sighed, “that’s probably how it’s supposed to be right? Well, maybe we’ll get there in a hundred years….”

I’m playing a game of trying to find out which candidates people are going to vote for. This is not a neutral question, so most will not volunteer this information, and I have to throw in a bit of the ‘clueless foreigner-thing’ to get my answers. I usually start by asking where they will vote. The country is divided into districts, and you can only vote for the candidates from your district. Then I ask what their options are, and if they have made their choice yet.

Many of my friends vote in the third district of Beirut, which means they have to chose 10 people out of a total of 41: five Sunni seats, one Orthodox, one Druze, one Shia, one Anglican and one Minority. Some will chose one or two candidates they can get behind and leave the rest of the ballot empty, but most of them are utterly disgusted with the choice they have and say they will drop a white ballot in the box, or not vote at all; to them, the difference between candidates from the ‘majority’ and ‘opposition’ is negligible.

There are also many people who have to go to their (grand-)parents’ village because they are registered to vote there, like a friend of mine who is supposed to go to Bint Jbeil to cast her ballot. She will not go, however. Knowing that the ballots in the South often come with even less variation than those in Beirut, I was wondering if the lack of choice was preventing her from voting, but that wasn’t the case. She told me: “We don’t vote unless we know the candidate really, really well. Imagine you vote for someone who is going to stay for four years, and in that time he does something that’s bad for the people – what would you say to God? How would you answer the question why you chose him when you get to heaven?” Now that’s taking voter-responsibility to a whole new level…