The Daily Star (Lebanon)
Thursday
East Beirut politicians prepare to rumble
by Benjamin Redd
East Beirut is gearing up for a blockbuster electoral fight.The headline event pits MP Michel Pharaon, the minister of state for planning, against Nicolas Sehnaoui, a former telecommunications minister and vice president of the Free Patriotic Movement.
BEIRUT: East Beirut is gearing up for a blockbuster electoral fight.The headline event pits MP Michel Pharaon, the minister of state for planning, against Nicolas Sehnaoui, a former telecommunications minister and vice president of the Free Patriotic Movement. Both are competing for the district’s sole Greek Catholic seat – meaning one of the contenders will fall on May 6. Both decry the other’s track record.
Sehnaoui “has many complaints against him and files [pending] at the Court of Audit” from his time as minister, Pharaon tells The Daily Star, alleging mismanagement of public funds.
Sehnaoui denies this. “All cases were extensively investigated by the courts and were assessed as false,” he says.
Hitting back, Sehnaoui says, “People need to reflect on any MP’s achievements, especially if they have been sitting in the same chair for 22 years.” Pharaon was first elected in 1996. The two heavyweights head lists representing the traditional parties. Pharaon leads a March 14 coalition that includes the Lebanese Forces, Kataeb and Ramgavar, an Armenian party.
The list is missing the bedrock of March 14, Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, which is officially absent from the district.
But Future-allied MP Sebouh Kalpakian has joined Sehnaoui’s FPM-Tashnag list. “This list has joined with the Tashnag party and the Future Movement, as well as the FPM,” he says.
Kalpakian also leads Hunchak, a rival of Tashnag and Ramgavar. “The two most powerful Armenian parties, Hunchak and Tashnag, are together,” he says.
“It’s the strongest list in [the East Beirut district], I think.”
The Armenian component is huge in East Beirut. Half the district’s eight seats are designated for Armenians – three Orthodox and one Catholic. The other four seats are parceled out to a Maronite, a Greek Catholic, a Greek Orthodox and a minority Christian.
With the new proportional voting system, outsiders are looking to crash in and take a share of those seats. Three other lists are looking to upset the main contenders, dangling the promise of even more spectacle to the election.
East Beirut will likely have the lowest vote threshold to enter Parliament in the country, some 5,000 to 7,000 ballots, depending on turnout. It was also home to a major – though unsuccessful – showing of “civil society” in the 2016 municipal elections.
“There isn’t March 14 or 8 [anymore]. There is one front, the establishment.” says Laury Haytayan, a candidate with the insurgent “All for the Nation” list.
The group is looking to capitalize on pent-up frustration at an often feckless political class.
“Our message is, you tried them for 40 years. If you don’t like the results, try us. We’re definitely not going to do harm, not in 4 years,” Haytayan says.
Pharaon says this is all well and good, but counters that “we need ethics and experience at this level because the challenges are very, very big.” Besides, “they are divided, so why don’t they get together?”
That hits on a key worry for some on the “outside”: with three lists, their vote could be divided, resulting in fewer seats for them and more for the traditional parties.
Michelle Tueni, who leads the Nahna Beirut list, dismisses this notion. On the contrary, she says, more people ought to vote since they will no longer have an excuse.
“Some people who listen to me are not convinced, and there are some people who listen to [All for the Nation candidates] and are not convinced … Now they have two [outside] choices; they don’t have to stay home. There is no reason to stay home,” she says.
Whether Nahna Beirut is truly an outsider’s list is up to debate.
Tueni is the scion of a storied Beiruti family, and her list includes the likes of Serge Torsarkissian, a current Beirut MP with Hunchak and the Future Movement, and Rafic Bazerji of former President Camille Chamoun’s National Liberal Party.
In a bout of political theater, Tueni’s list also includes Sebouh Mekhjian, the former head of Pharaon’s political office.
“The timing [of Mekhjian’s departure] is bad for any political organization because it creates question marks,” Pharaon tells The Daily Star, declining to comment further.
The twist isn’t unique in East Beirut’s electoral race. Rumors of infighting have already hit both Pharaon’s and Sehnaoui’s camps.
Al-Akhbar Tuesday published a brief report that Riad Akel and Imad Wakim, both Lebanese Forces candidates on Pharaon’s list, were in a spat over preferential votes. Under the new electoral law, voters can choose one “preferred” candidate on their selected list – pitting candidates against others on their own slate for higher billing in seat distribution.
The report alleged Akel had been fishing for preferential votes at Wakim’s expense, leading to a tweet last week from LF leader Samir Geagea urging his supporters to use their vote for Wakim because Akel “can get the necessary votes from other parts of the community.”
Both Akel and Wakim flatly deny the allegations.
“It’s totally untrue,” Akel tells The Daily Star. “From day one our strategy was to split the votes [so that Wakim] will get votes from the party and I will get votes from outside … I’m strong outside the party.”
The same Al-Akhbar report said a similar issue was at play between Sehnaoui and the FPM candidate for the minorities seat, retired Brig. Gen. Antoine Bano. Sehnaoui denies the allegations.
They are unlikely to be the last punches to fly.