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The 1960 Lebanese Parliamentary Elections LEBANESE POLITICS in some ways resemble those of certain American cities. The population of about 1.4 million is roughly comparable to that of Detroit or greater Boston; its religious and ethnic divisions (seven major religious sects, and a large number of Armenians in the city of Beirut) might be compared to an urban mixture of Italians, Irish, Negroes Jews, etc. in the United States; the various groups tend to compete, not always on equal terms, for public works, patronage, and educational benefits. There is also the fine art of machine politics practiced by district bosses, conducted on the basis of personal prestige, distribution of favors, minority grievances, and a good bit of skullduggery. On the other hand, Lebanon is a country and not just a city, even if a third of the population does live in Beirut. Machine politics in the city operate differently from machine politics in rural areas; the city is the more natural arena of demagogues, the country of semi-feudal landowners. There are not one or two machines competing for power, but ten or fifteen, none of which extends beyond a handful of parliamentary constituencies. A national election in Lebanon is composed of a scattered series of local contests in the various districts, each of which produces its own conflict of issues and organizations as well as personalities. Out of 99 Deputies recently elected to Parliament, the largest distinct bloc numbered only 11, and the largest representation for a real political party was only six. Only 64 of the 99 Deputies belong to parties or blocs at all, and these are divided among 13 organizations. Furthermore, as an independent country rather than a mere city, Lebanon's politics lack the functional framework and the broad outlets afforded to American cities by the existence of a national government. This means that on the one hand all types of issues are current in Lebanon, including the most fundamental questions of constitutional principles - that is to say, "national" as well as mere "municipal" issues; while on the other hand, lacking the safety-valve of a wider national political scene, political life goes on in a parochial atmosphere and the full attention of politically-minded persons is directed to affairs which are necessarily local. Lebanon in this sense is a Brooklyn or a Baltimore cut off from the United States, with its own armed forces and its own seat in the United Nations, a hothouse of local issues without even the ventilating currents of New York City, let alone Washington. The parliamentary institutions of the country cannot rest on the support of anyone but the tiny and refracted population of Lebanon itself. These institutions have been subjected to severe strains since they were created, and a survey of the parliamentary elections of June and July 1960 will show that several vital questions are not yet resolved. It is important to note that the system rests on two somewhat contradictory principles. The first principle is that of liberal democracy. The constitution was introduced in 1926 at an early stage of the French mandate and reflects generally the constitutional provisions of the Third French Republic: a President of the Republic, a Council of Ministers responsible to a Chamber of Deputies elected by universal suffrage, freedom of political organization, and the basic personal liberties of speech, worship, assembly, press, and so forth. The wide powers of the French High Commissioner have largely been inherited by the President of the Republic since independence was achieved in 1943. There is no reference in the constitution itself to the political status of any religious group, only a loosely worded provision that government posts should be spread on a reasonable basis among the various communities. This provision, taken at face value, would not necessarily detract from the liberal and secular character of political life, and it does not require any institutionalization of the position of confessional groups; indeed, to be consistent with the spirit of liberal democracy it should not do so. But it has been implemented, through customary practice as well as through the Electoral Law, in such an elaborate and precise manner as to become the second great principle of political organization, pointing in a very different direction from the first. By rigid custom, the President of the Republic must be Maronite Catholic, the Prime Minister Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Shi'ite Muslim. The Commander-in-Chief of the army and the director of the office of internal security (Sûreté Générale) are invariably Maronites. Somewhat more flexibly, the cabinet should be distributed among all major sects in rough proportion to their size (the four-man cabinet of "national reconciliation" following the 1958 civil war was a unique exception, consisting of two Sunnis and two Maronites)1. In practice, furthermore, the Foreign affairs and Education portfolios have almost always gone to Christians, especially Maronites. Civil service, police, and army ranks are also supposed to be fairly apportioned, although here it must be said that the Maronites hold an entrenched position. A rigid proportion of appointments would of course limit the hiring of the best qualified, but since the Fall of 1958 the successive cabinets of Rashid Karamé, under the pressure of Muslim demands, have initiated a fifty-fifty quota system for Christians and Muslims in making many of the new appointments. A number of Muslim leaders now insist on continuing this principle, and it can be expected to keep successive cabinets well supplied with causes for quarrel for some years, in view of the generally higher level of education among Christians. The most detailed institutional application of sectarianism is found in the Electoral Law. The number of Deputies has fluctuated considerably from one election to the next as the law was amended, but always in multiples of eleven: 44, 66, 99, etc. This has enabled a permanent proportion of six Christians to five Muslims (the Druses being considered as Muslims for this purpose). The subdivision of sects has varied slightly: the present bloc of 54 Christians includes 30 Maronite seats, 11 Greek Orthodox, 6 Greek Catholic, 4 Armenian Orthodox, one Armenian Catholic, one Protestant, and one seat for "minorities" (the incumbent happens to be Roman Catholic). The 45 Muslim seats include 20 Sunnis, 19 Shi'ites, and 6 Druses. To arrange this distribution, the 99 seats are divided geographically (under the present version of the Electoral Law) into 26 districts, each of which elects from two to eight Deputies of specified religious affiliation. The Shuf district, for example, must elect three Maronites, two Sunnis, two Druses, and one Greek Catholic. Since most districts have populations of several sects, candidates must often depend upon votes from sects other than their own, and this tends to reduce appeals to religious partisanship and encourage moderation. But a little gerrymandering will go a long way. In the 1957 elections the electoral map was re-drawn to give the Shuf a preponderance of Christian voters, who returned a slate favorable to President Camille Chamoun and defeated Kamal Junblat, the most prominent Druse personality2 of the area and an opponent of the President. Similarly in Beirut, the two relatively homogeneous districts of 1957 became three: one overwhelmingly Muslim, one overwhelmingly Christian, and one mixed. The result was an easy victory for prominent Muslim and Christian champions in the first two districts respectively, who had failed to win in 1957 and had faced each other across the barricades in 1958: Sa'eb Salam and Abdullah Mashnuq for the Muslims, and Pierre Jemayel for the Christians. The remaining district in Beirut, though mixed, had a sufficient Muslim preponderance (and a sufficient tendency among Christians to stay at home) to permit the election of the most fire-breathing extremist of all, Adnan Hakim of the Islamic Najjada party, a puritan who does not believe in smoking, drinking, or political compromise. Other districts were too solid to be gerrymandered. Chamoun himself won a seat in the overwhelmingly Christian district of Matn despite the evident disfavor of the government. In the districts farthest from Beirut - Akkar in the north, Marjayoun in the south, and Baalbak in the east - where there is little publicity, the government is widely believed to be guilty of interference on behalf of favored candidates, all of whom were elected. An important innovation in the new Electoral Law on this occasion was the introduction of fully secret voting. Under the previous system, there were no official ballot forms; the voter simply brought his own ballot to the polls, where he dropped it, folded in two, into the box under the eyes of officials and poll-watchers. No one could read his ballot, but it was easy to ensure that voters who had been bribed or otherwise instructed deposited the same ballot that had been handed to them just outside the polling area. Where local strong-arm organizations were powerful and public security lax, independent voting was naturally discouraged and buying of votes was easy to manage. All this has now been changed. The voter in 1960 again brought his own ballot, but he was now required to enter a private booth and place his ballot in an envelope provided by the authorities. Thus on his way to the polls he might wave his straight-ticket ballot for all to see, but once inside the booth there was nothing to prevent him from changing the names on it or pulling another piece of paper from his pocket. Bribery could still be practiced, but the results now depended on the good faith of the bribed. The most dependable form of bribery remaining is to buy up the identity cards of voters known to support one's opponent, but this method has limited possibilities. It is impossible to evaluate the effect of this reform on the actual behavior of voters. One might expect it to weaken the influence of large landowners and other wealthy men. It is true that Najib Salha, a lavish multi-millionaire, failed to win, but then he had never won before. The two leading landowners of the Biqaa valley, Sabri Hamadeh and Joseph Skaff, scored their usual easy victories, 3 and the prototype of all reactionary landlords, Ahmad al-As'ad, actually regained the seat he had lost in 1957. But some of Hamadeh's and As'ad's fellow members on the list were not so fortunate. The chief significance of the 1960 elections, however, stems from the fact that they are the first since the civil war of 1958 and thus represent a kind of return to normalcy. The parliament of 1957, elected in the days of Chamoun and strongly favorable to him, was to all intents a lame duck from the day it named General Fuad Chehab as the new president on July 31, 1958. It did not include such prominent rebels as Sa'eb Salam, Abdullah Yafi, and Kamal Junblat, nor on the loyalist side Pierre Jemayel, while on the other hand certain Deputies, such as Sami as-Solh (Chamoun's premier during the insurrection) and Charles Malik were now politically dead. In fact, although the number of Deputies was raised from 66 to 99, only 30 of those elected in 1957 were re-elected in 1960, while 50 of the new members had never been Deputies before at all. These statistics suggest how much water has passed over the dam in the last three years. After the end of the troubles in October 1958, the country was governed for many months by an emergency cabinet intent on pacification and reconciliation, consisting of only four members equally balancing the two sides: Karamé for the insurgents, Jemayel for the loyalists as the two extremes; and the moderately insurgent Hussein al-Owaini and the moderate loyalist Raymond Eddé in the middle. This later gave way to the larger but equally balanced Karamé cabinet (still including Jemayel and Owaini). Both governments ruled with very little interference from the Chamber of Deputies. Although the full term of the 1957 Chamber would have continued until 1961, its dissolution only awaited the time when the country would have recovered sufficient calm for new elections, and these were called last May, with a caretaker cabinet of technicians, headed by the retired diplomat Ahmad Da'uk, replacing the Karamé government in order to guarantee (more or less) neutral supervision of the contest. As at the last election, the various districts went to the polls on four successive Sundays so as to enable the concentration of army and police security forces in sufficient numbers. The result was a virtually bloodless, and at least reasonably clean, election less than two years after the end of the civil war. Had the election been a direct contest between the two sides of 1958, or a clear referendum on the issues, it would not only have been extremely difficult to maintain order, but more important still, it would have violated a basic principle of Lebanese politics that the less said or done about the most sensitive issues the better. Just as the sectarian division of offices is largely predetermined, and just as only coalition cabinets have any chance of success, so parliamentary elections ought not to pit candidates who differ sharply on basic issues directly against each other. There were several local exceptions in this case. Adnan Hakim ran against Sami as-Solh in Beirut's Second District and scored a huge victory, but three moderate candidates were also running for the seat in question. In the Shuf mountain district, Junblat and his list turned the tables on Chamoun's supporters, to whom he had lost in 1957, but here the drama of the contest was mitigated by the absence of both Chamoun himself (who originally came from the Shuf but chose to run elsewhere) and his chief local henchman, Na'im Mughabghab, who had been murdered by followers of Junblat a year ago. Junblat's victory in the end was something of an anti-climax. Elsewhere there were very few direct confrontations. Each side of 1958 tended instead to compete within itself in a shifting and sometimes contradictory series of patterns. On the Muslim side, in Beirut's overwhelmingly Muslim, anti-Chamounist Third District, an unsuccessful effort was made to agree on a single list of unopposed, candidates representing ex-rebel solidarity. After considerable squabbling, issuing and withdrawing of accusations, double-crossing of partners, and occasional bomb explosions, Sa'eb Salam, together with the venomous newspaper editor, Abdullah Mashnuq, and three others emerged victorious, leaving Salam's list-partner Abdullah Yafi to cry loudly (and with some apparent justification) of a naked betrayal by Salam. The latter was also accused of having succumbed to the wealth of Uthman Dana, a newcomer among the successful candidates, and contributing his influence to the victory of Mashnuq and Dana and the defeat of Rashid as-Solh as well as of Yafi, in violation of his pledge of alliance with Yafi and of neutrality toward the others. Charges of this nature are commonplace in Lebanese elections; in this instance they only illustrate the lack of sectarian solidarity in the electoral campaign. Whatever the truth in the charges, the fact remains that Yafi's defeat eliminated a prominent competitor of Salam's for the prime ministry, and that when Salam did become Premier a few weeks later, both Mashnuq and Dana turned up in his cabinet. On the Christian side, a picture of equal confusion is presented by the relations between the two most prominent personalities, Camille Chamoun and Pierre Jemayel. Although these two were close comrades in 1958, they fell to rivalry not long afterward. On his retirement from the presidency, Chamoun had organized his parliamentary followers into what was rather dubiously entitled the National Liberal party. Simultaneously, Jemayel took office in the Karamé government as leader of the Phalanges party, which was of long standing but primarily organized outside of Parliament. On the one hand, Jemayel could only regard Chamoun's new bloc as a rival to his own group, since both would have to look for their support among the same Christian elements. On the other hand, in joining the Karamé cabinet, Jemayel pursued a policy of reconciliation toward the Muslim ex-insurgents which his party has followed consistently ever since: a friendly meeting with the ambassador of the U.A.R., formerly a symbol of "massive infiltration"; allusions to the need for greater government services in poor (Muslim) areas of the country; glowing praise for Nasir's regime on the 1960 anniversary of the Egyptian revolution; banquet appearances with Sa'eb Salam; and now, participation in Salam's cabinet. Meanwhile Chamoun and his group, after scoring a moderate success in the elections, have been coldly ignored in the formation of the new government despite the professed intention of including all parties and blocs in a grand coalition of national unity. The Jemayel-Chamoun split stems from two very different attitudes. The Phalanges, once a doctrinaire and militant youth movement, have now come to see their future as a parliamentary party benefiting from orthodox parliamentary tactics of compromise and exchanging support with groups from the other side of the sectarian fence. They recognize that the independent Lebanon to which they cling so jealously cannot exist without the help of Muslims, and they have set out to bargain for such help. Chamoun and his party, by contrast, have gained nothing since 1958; in fact, they have lost a great deal and seem now to have nowhere to go. Unlike outspoken men from the former rebel side, such as Junblat and Hakim, they have no concrete demands to achieve from the new regime; they are disillusioned and bitter men who have not-or temperamentally cannot-climb down from the barricades. These differences explain the fact that in the Matn constituency a Chamounist and a Phalangist list contested all five seats before an electorate that would have welcomed a coalition between them. Personalities, therefore, were about the only basis of choice and the voters tended to split the ticket freely, with the result that the Phalangist list won three sets and the Chamounists two, the balance being tipped by the Armenian voters of the district. In Beirut's First District, meanwhile, Pierre Jemayel led a Phalangist list of eight candidates to a landslide victory over the National Bloc list of Pierre Eddé, who was supported by Chamoun, the Phalangists once again profiting from the strong-arm machine of the Armenian Tashnak party. And yet in the Baabda district the Phalanges, National Bloc, and National Liberal party joined forces to form a winning list. Thus the elections tended not to produce a confrontation of bitter sectarian partisans but to scatter the forces of each group into localized rivalries. Whatever boasting there was about 1958 Performances, it took place intramurally within each community. Once again it appeared that it was safer to keep natural bedfellows apart, in order to make the necessary combination of strange bedfellows in the new cabinet. The fact that six party blocs emerged with about equal strength (Phalanges and National Bloc, 6 each; National Liberal party, Junblat's Progressive Socialist party, and ex-President Bishara al-Khuri's Constitutional Bloc, 5 each; and the Armenian Tashnak party, 4) is of little importance when one considers that this totals only 31 Deputies out of 99, and that these parties have contributed only six members to the new cabinet of 18. 4 During the sordid scramble for cabinet seats (loftily referred to as "consultations"), many leading Deputies made generous professions of good-will and called for national unity. It was explained that the cabinet would be broad and diverse in composition in order to compel leaders of all factions to put their names to a declaration of Policy defining the terms of sectarian harmony. But the euphoria is only superficial. The unprecedented size of the cabinet is a sure sign of weakness ("More like a parliament than a cabinet," as one critic remarked), reflecting an inordinate desire to please everybody. But even this was not accomplished: the Chamoun, Raymond Eddé, and Karamé blocs are not represented. Neither Chamoun nor his militant allies of the National Social party (formerly known as the Parti Populaire Syrien) will be morally bound by the declaration. It is rather like a disarmament treaty without the Russians. That Lebanon is being kept from a return to anarchy only by tenuous circumstances was shown by a dramatic incident on July 20. In the midst of negotiations for the new cabinet, President Chehab abruptly announced his resignation. A mob of Deputies of all shades, described by the press as "weeping," "sobbing," "beseeching," and other pathetic characterizations, besieged him in his residence, declaiming that he was an irreplaceable symbol of unity and that they themselves would resign en masse from Parliament. Kamal Junblat warned Chehab that the election of a successor by Parliament would throw open the whole sectarian question, adding the ominous compliment that "we only accepted the status quo because of you." Ninety Deputies petitioned him to withdraw his resignation, and when at length Chehab was persuaded of his indispensability and agreed to stay, his letter of resignation was ceremoniously burned by the Speaker of the Chamber, ex-rebel Sabri Hamadeh, over a candle held by Chamounist Albert Mukhaibir. The affair was taken as an occasion for national rejoicing and the President was hailed for gaining a new popular mandate, but the deeper implications are discouraging. There are two lessons to be drawn. In the first place there is the danger that the issues of 1958, which were primarily sectarian issues, may again break out into the open. The July 20 incident demonstrated that Parliament is incapable of performing its constitutional function. The Deputies made a display of solidarity only because they were afraid to face the deep divisions among themselves. A franker expression of the true state of mind is found in a statement by Junblat to the press after his election, in which he declared his attachment to reconciliation and the abolition of sectarianism but added that he feared his nerves might not be able to stand the sight of Camille Chamoun in Parliament. In the same vein, the lyrical chorus of intersectarian good-will, sung by many Muslim leaders, was offset by Adnan Hakim, who bluntly declared that reconciliation could not be achieved merely by adjusting personal differences but only by dealing with the substantive issues, particularly his own demand for a new public census and a greater share of public offices for Muslims. Pierre Jemayel replied by branding all demands for a census as "criminal," but Hakim had the last word. On July 12 his newspaper Sawt al-'Uruba (The Voice of Arabism) attacked "the wolves of Lebanon . . . who live off the fat of the Arabs and yet feel a sickly hatred for them. They poke their noses into Arab affairs, only to act as the eyes and ears of imperialism. They creep on their bellies to the doorsteps of the Western nations, even when the westerners slap their faces, tread them underfoot, and smear their foreheads with mud." With this parting shot the discussion of sectarianism petered out, to be forgotten for the moment amid the celebrations of national brotherhood when Chehab withdrew his resignation. But under the prodding of irresponsible gadflies like Hakim, it may be difficult to avoid such explosive questions in the future. The second lesson of July 20 points to a still greater though less dramatic danger. This is the danger that future governments, like past ones, will continue to satisfy themselves with the mere avoidance of sectarian strife by sweeping more dust under the carpet and buying off the protagonists with cabinet seats, while allowing the country to stagnate in all other respects-health, education, rural improvement, employment, and so forth. This has been going on more or less regularly since 1943. As long as cabinets are based on the principle of sectarian, regional, partisan and personal appeasement, the least important consideration will be competence for the job, and the only thing on which coalition cabinets will be able to agree will be to leave things as they are. Amid the arguments on how to cut up the cake, some persons are beginning to notice that the cake is growing rather stale. Here is President Chehab's opportunity. It is widely believed that as a military man with no taste for political bargaining, he resigned in disgust over the squalid dickering for seats in the new cabinet. Parliament having abjectly surrendered its powers to him, he now has the rare chance to insist on some progress. There is already considerable disappointment that he has so far ignored this opportunity and instead allowed an immobile and oversized crazy-quilt of old faces to take office. It may be that sectarian quarrels will be covered over by this patchwork. But there are some who argue that to make real progress a cohesive team of men with a clear program is needed. Let it be Jemayel's or Eddé's or even Junblat's party, or let it come from outside Parliament altogether; let President Chehab use all his prestige to gain acceptance for their program, in the manner of a de Gaulle rather than an Eisenhower. Unfortunately however, even those who advance such arguments doubt that Chehab's temperament would lead him in this direction.
Mr. Kerr is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the American University of Beirut 1 The district of Sidon is the sole exception, electing a single Deputy. 2 In 1960, however, Junblat's list won a smashing victory despite a demarcation of the district that was scarcely more in his favor than before. Many Christians this time apparently abstained from voting. Possibly government pressures influenced the voters both in 1957 and 1960. 3 On election day Hamadeh shot and wounded an army officer stationed at the polls who refused to allow Hamadeh's entourage to enter the polling area with him. The officer's formal complaint was hushed up. Hamadeh's principal opponent, Riad Taha, meanwhile formally contested the electoral results on grounds of campaign malpractices by Hamadeh, but with the promised investigation still pending, the Chamber of Deputies got on with the job and elected Hamadeh its Speaker by a large majority. 4 Sa'eb Salam, Prime Minister and Interior; Nasim Majdalani, Deputy Premier and Justice; Majid Arslan, Defense; Philip Taqla, Foreign Affairs; Kamal Junblat, Education; Elias Khuri, Health; Sulaiman Ali, National Economy; Fuad Ghosn, Information; Joseph Skaff, Social Affairs; Pierre Jemayel, Finance; Sulaiman Franjieh, Posts, Telegraphs, Telephones; Uthman Dana, Public Works; Rafiq Shahin, Planning; Muhammad Safieddin, Agriculture; Maurice Jemayel, Husain Mansour, Khatchik Babikian, and Abdullah Mashnuq, ministers of State. Taken from Middle East Affairs v.11, no. 9 - Oct. 1960 |
 Material provided by the AUB Jafet Library / Archives |