In Lebanese elections last week, pro-change candidates won at least a dozen seats in parliament, and Hezbollah and its allies lost their majority. The result was hailed as a “breakthrough” by some Lebanese media, but it also showed the challenges of changing the political system when people facing chronic food and fuel shortages are exhausted by the demands of survival.

Official turnout barely exceeded 49% and some 90% of those who voted still chose traditional sectarian parties.

“A lot of people just didn’t vote, and that’s very sad,” says Nisrine Hammoud, who was among hundreds of thousands on the streets during Lebanon’s 2019 “October Revolution.” you know how hard people struggle… It’s like, ‘Why… didn’t you go vote?’ says Ms. Hammoud, now in her twenties and working in Beirut.

“Rewinding this is going to take a long time,” says Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “In a deeply polarized country, you’re going to get people to vote for their sectarian leadership, even if they’re not happy with them, because scaremongering works.”

Yet support for candidates for change was nearly double what had been expected. “The numbers … tell us there is a change,” says Dr Yahya. “The question is, are we going to build on it?”

LONDON

With a Lebanese flag draped over her shoulders and optimism for political change filling her heart, Nisrine Hammoud joined hundreds of thousands of her fellow citizens in the streets during Lebanon’s ‘October Revolution’ in 2019.

‘We feel like we’re alive again,’ she told the Monitor late at night in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square at the time, as protesters demanded the overthrow of a class politics notorious for corruption and a total uprooting of the entrenched sectarian system that led to the collapse of the state.

An election was the “only chance” to make such a change, Ms Hammoud said. “It’s up to us. It’s up to people to decide if they’re going to go back to their old ways or if we’re going to move on.

That election finally took place on May 15, but with mixed results for activists like Ms. Hammoud. Pro-change candidates won a dozen or more of the 128 seats in parliament, and Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies lost their majority, dropping from 71 to 58 seats.

The result exceeded modest expectations for anti-establishment candidates, and was therefore hailed as a “breakthrough” by some Lebanese media. But it also showed the challenges of changing the country’s entrenched sectarian system at a time when people are worn down by the demands of survival.

Indeed, popular discontent grew further following the explosion of the port of Beirut in August 2020 and the continued disintegration of the economy and services which left more than 70% of Lebanese living under the threshold of poverty.

The self-proclaimed October Revolution and its street protests dissipated long ago, snuffed out by the COVID-19 pandemic and then day-to-day concerns like coping with lack of electricity and chronic food and fuel shortages, activists say.

And yet, around 90% of those who voted last week still chose traditional sectarian parties, including politicians – often political kingmakers for decades, who had become warlords during Lebanon’s civil war of 1975 to 1990 – brought the nation to this state of collapse.

“The results are kind of shocking because it’s not just people who voted for the wrong people – a lot of people just didn’t vote,” Ms Hammoud, now in her 20s, says of the low participation rate of 49%. “We needed people to actually take action. And this election was our only ticket…to vote for people who will truly represent us.

A divided opposition

Although Lebanon’s chronic crises have caused deep discouragement, analysts say this has not translated into much support for the candidates for change, who were diverse and divided.

“They were literally undermining each other, so anyone who wanted to vote for change…had no place to go,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

She notes that 11 separate lists of anti-establishment candidates clashed in the Sunni Muslim-majority northern city of Tripoli, one of Lebanon’s poorest. An analysis by the Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation International found that had the opposition been unified nationwide, it would likely have doubled its seats in parliament.

Still, the dozen seats changing from captured candidates are nearly double the number many had predicted ahead of Election Day.

“There is change and change,” says Dr. Yahya. “Now how deep, and if this is the start of real change that we can build on. The question is, are we going to build on that?

Lebanon has been governed for decades under a formula that shares seats of political power among parties tied to different religious groups, and citizens tend to vote along religious lines. “Rewinding this is going to take a long time,” she said.

“If you are afraid that Hezbollah will attack you, you come forward and vote for [Christian] Lebanese Forces, because you think they are the ones who will be able to stand up” and protect you, explains Dr Yahya. “You are not going to overhaul a system like Lebanon’s overnight.”

European Union chief election observer György Hölvényi said the elections were “overshadowed by widespread practices of vote-buying and clientelism, which distorted equal opportunities”. Observers from the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections recorded 3,600 “flagrant violations” on election day and said supporters of the two main Shia parties, Hezbollah and Amal, attacked their observers.

The dispute to come

The impact of the vote will become clearer in the coming months. Parliament will first choose a new president – almost certainly the leader of Amal Nabih Berri, who has held the post for 30 years already. Then he will face the much more difficult task of electing a government, whose top priority will be the laws and changes needed to comply with the International Monetary Fund’s conditions for massive bailout funds.

“It means you really want a seat at the table – the stakes are much higher,” says Heiko Wimmen, political analyst at the International Crisis Group in Beirut. Finding a win-win formula for all will be “extremely difficult”, he predicts.

On paper, the new cadre of change MPs “could potentially be kingmakers, but that would require a cohesive parliamentary bloc” and a common platform, which seems a distant prospect, Mr Wimmen says.

He notes that an assumption made throughout Lebanon’s multiple crises has been proven wrong. Many observers had believed that the situation for average Lebanese citizens would become so dire that the political elite would be forced to change their behavior or risk a popular uprising.

In fact, politicians are flaunting their wealth and power as brazenly as ever, and as people have become more desperate and discouraged, they “are less able to organize any kind of resistance”, Wimmen says.

Tired voters

And they’re exhausted, Ms. Hammoud points out.

“People got so distracted by other things, like putting food on the table,” she says. “For two years, we have just been struggling to fill up our cars with gas, to be able to buy bread. We stood in line for hours just to get things done, and now we have this electricity problem, and the Lebanese pound continues to devalue against the dollar.

Ms Hammoud says the presentation of anti-establishment candidates in last week’s election strikes her as a pale reflection of the popular demand for change she felt on the streets in 2019.

She knows she’s in the minority, but she’s not giving up.

The politician-warlords in power in Lebanon “stole our money, they stole our parents’ pension funds, and we don’t have electricity because of them; we have [nothing] because of them,” says Ms. Hammoud. Just keeping that reality in mind, she adds, “is always our motivation, because it’s the only way to wake people up.”