With the much-anticipated elections planned for the end of March, the registration of diaspora voters is currently taking place and ends on November 20.
Early parliamentary elections had been a key demand point in the thawra’s demands for the past couple of years, and now the time has finally come to test the ground and change the status quo.
While preparations have not been finalized yet, a wide electoral alliance between thawra groups is still on the table.
Some thawra factions had viewed elections as a weak opportunity for change, at best, and at worst, an opportunity for the regime to preserve itself by gaining a sort of temporary legitimacy.
These views have underpinned some parties’ call for a “peaceful transition of power”, or for greater focus on grassroots initiatives that can cause impact at a local level, to be later reproducible at the national scale.
While these views hold their valid reasoning, they tend to underplay how crucial Parliament is to the whole picture. The Parliament remains the critical piece on the chessboard for the thawra, as it is the door that leads to a change in the executive and judicial branches of government, and the one by which all critical reforms will pass through.
Defeatist attitude, marked by statements such as “nothing will change”, are anti-intellectual, unjustifiably negative and do nothing but generate a self-defeating prophecy.
In reality, the social and political wave generated by the thawra has created huge hidden momentum in the hearts and minds of the population. Choosing to tap into that energy, or to waste it, is in the entire hands of every single Lebanese citizen.
10 MPs enables a coalition to introduce and contest bills. 20 MPs yield a strong opposition that can influence decisions in an important way. Anything more than that and the thawra, if united, is headed to being the strongest bloc in Parliament.
It is inevitable the cartel will try to cheat as much as possible, to limit the MPs to below 10, so that the current political status quo remains.
Lebanon realistically only has the next two parliamentary election cycles as critical events that will dictate its entire long-run destiny. Either the country degenerates into a failed tribal mafia state, or gradual change starts to happen now, generating the momentum required to pass critical existential reforms. Choose to be on the right side of history.