Following the resignation of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, analysts claim there is a 'political hole' among the country's Sunni majority.
Lebanon's capital, Beirut, is a bustling metropolis. When former Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced last month that he was ending his 17-year political career, many of his followers in his party's major Beirut bastion of Tariq al-Jdideh were deafeningly silent.
To protest the decision, a dozen men descended on a junction and set fire to tyres and garbage bins, but the majority of people closed their businesses and went home.
Since former millionaire Prime Minister Rafik Hariri oversaw Lebanon's post-war rebuilding in the early 1990s, the Hariri family has been the driving force behind the Saudi-backed Future Movement, which has been Lebanon's dominant Sunni political organization for more than three decades.
Hariri senior was slain on February 14, 2005, 17 years ago, and his family and associates have pointed the blame at the Syrian government and its allies in Lebanon, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, for the killing.
Since then, the Future Movement has lost its strength and support, and Saudi Arabia has stopped funding in both the nation and the party, citing Hezbollah's rising prominence as a source of irritation.
Analysts now claim that the Sunni minority, which accounts for one-third of the population in a nation governed by a shaky sectarian power-sharing system, is experiencing a political "vacuum."
Bachar El-Halabi, a political expert, told Al Jazeera that the next elections will witness a "fragmentation of Sunni participation." He added that
Lebanon's next parliamentary elections will take place in May, marking the first time since the country's economy began to deteriorate in August of this year. El-Halabi, on the other hand, said that there would not be another leader that will represent the Sunni community across the board, also known as za'im, such as Hariri. "There is no one else with this kind of appeal in terms of popularity."
Current members of parliament from the Future Movement are drawn from a small number of Sunni-majority districts, most notably Beirut, Tripoli, and Saida. The Future Movement has 20 members of parliament. Hariri's political opponents, as well as new anti-establishment organizations, perceive an opening.
"I do not agree with the idea of za'im. As a member of parliament, Fouad Makhzoumi said that "if we want to construct a nation where your children and grandchildren may live," we can no longer allow a za'im or one point of reference for a religious group to exist.
'Contain the Sunnis,' they say.
Makhzoumi is a millionaire business entrepreneur who campaigned against the Future Movement in Beirut in 2018 and was elected to the city council.
However, he is concentrating his efforts on Beirut's second district, which he refers to as the "mother of all wars," and does not view Hariri's resignation as a chance to spread his political movement to other areas.
"I'm certain that the people of Akkar's [district] will have leaders that they desire, just as they will have leaders in Tripoli, West Bekaa, and other places," Makhzoumi stated.
Makhzoumi, like Hariri, is concerned about the growing influence of the Iran-backed Shia organization Hezbollah in the nation. However, he believes that Saad Hariri should have been more active in dealing with them, particularly when an international tribunal sentenced a Hezbollah agent to five life terms in absentia for his father's death, in which he played a "central" role. Salim Ayyache, the operator in question, was never captured.
Hezbollah, according to him, would attempt to fill the hole with its own friends. "They want to have influence over the Sunnis," the business mogul said.
Activists started Beirut Tuqawem (Beirut Resists) on the Corniche promenade by the Mediterranean Sea, a politically progressive election campaign that will run throughout Beirut's second district as well as the rest of the city. They are categorically opposed to Lebanon's mosaic of sectarian governing parties and financial institutions — with no exceptions.
"I believe there is a space today that is open to youth-led progressive rhetoric that will truly be a new compass and perspective that isn't about sectarianism and za'ims," Ibrahim Mneimneh, a member of the group, told Al Jazeera. "I believe there is a space today that is open to youth-led progressive rhetoric that will really be a new compass and perspective that isn't about sectarianism and za'
After running unsuccessfully in both the municipal and parliamentary elections in 2016, Mneimneh claims that things have changed since Lebanon's economic crisis and large demonstrations in late 2019. He claims that the situation has improved since the end of the year.
"No one, with the exception of a tiny minority, thinks that the establishment's parties can manage the nation, or that they are influenced by their political rhetoric." "They're well aware that everything is insolvent," Mneimneh remarked.
Lebanon was once a middle-income country, but the country's economic crisis has forced more than three-quarters of the people into poverty, devastated the value of the national currency by 90 percent, and caused food prices to spike. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese families rely on charitable organizations and relatives for financial aid since the country lacks sustainable social services and public institutions.
Mneimneh believes that more people are want "political clarity."
The Hariri family, on the other hand, is not totally out of the picture. Bahaa Hariri, Saad Hariri's elder brother and a rich businessman who has chosen to remain in the background for years, has promoted his political initiative Sawa Li Lubnan, which means "Saad's brother" (Together For Lebanon).
It has been over a half-decade since Bahaa has been projected as Saad Hariri's successor, and he has received Saudi Arabia's support to head the Future Movement party. He has been residing in another country for some years and has not returned to Lebanon.
"I want to continue the path of the deceased Prime Minister Rafik Hariri," the elder Hariri stated in a video statement released a few days after Saad's removal from the country. "Any deceptive or frightening message regarding a gap in any of the components of Lebanese society serves solely the interests of the country's adversaries," the statement reads.
Although Bahaa Hariri will not be a candidate, he is ensuring that Sawa Li Lubnan is prominent across the nation by placing large billboards around the country and investing heavily in its media. Over the course of the last year, the group has also participated in community and social service projects.
When the Future Movement took a more conciliatory and accommodating approach with Hezbollah, the older Hariri denounced it as "political blasphemy," according to the Associated Press. As Saad Hariri had said, the deal was reached in order to avert a new civil war in Lebanon.
The spokesman for Sawa Li Lubnan, Hady Mourad, told Al Jazeera that the party "transcends all areas and sects" and that its membership is not primarily Sunni in orientation.
Rafik Hariri's proposal, which was about constructing a state rather than about building a political leadership, "clearly overlaps with our vision," the spokesman stated.
It is difficult to assess the legacy of Saad Hariri senior since detractors accuse him of disregarding productive economic areas and instituting policies that set the path for the country's economic downfall. But his fans saw him as a state-building technocrat who did not take part in the civil war since he was not a member of Lebanon's governing parties throughout the conflict.
In contrast to Makhzoumi and Beirut Tuqawem, Mourad said that the party aims to run in a small number of districts throughout Lebanon, but he did not elaborate on which districts or coalitions the party intended to run in.
"It's true that we support [Saad] Hariri in taking this decision, which was taken at a difficult moment in Lebanon at a time when the nation has been closed off by the Arab world," Mourad remarked. "We wish Hariri and the Future Movement nothing but the best in their endeavors."
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
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