The Arab world is witnessing a dangerous head-on confrontation between Islamist parties and organizations and incumbent governments. At the same time secular parties are clearly facing a crisis as they struggle for relevance and, in most cases, for survival. These parties have lost their attraction for voters and have become secondary actors in the political process. They feel victimized by authoritarian regimes and governments and lack the resources and means to check the Islamist activists.
The current crisis of the secular movement is emerging as a major obstacle to the democratization of Arab societies. The rise of Islamists has even forced them to seek protection through alliances with ruling parties or dictators. These in turn confront them with the enduring challenge of operating in a context that systematically obstructs their political revitalization and reform. What accounts for their decline, other than being in the midst of a power struggle between dictators and Islamists, is that they are out of touch with the masses because they are often managed by an aging and stagnant leadership.
In Lebanon, a multiparty system has been in place since the 1920s. However, party constituencies have tended to form around ethnic and sectarian ties rather than political platforms. While in the 1950s and 1960s some parties attempted to strengthen their secular credentials and attract constituents from outside their traditional social environments, ideologies rarely transcend allegiance to traditional leadership. This tendency is becoming problematic for Lebanese democracy, even as several new parties are emerging as advocates of secularization.
Since independence in 1943, national policy has been determined largely by a restricted group of traditional, regional and sectarian leaders. The National Pact that established the political foundations of modern Lebanon allocated political power according to a confessional system based on the 1932 census. Efforts to alter or abolish this confessional system of allocating power along religious lines have been at the center of Lebanese politics for over 50 years. Those sectarian groups favored by this formula naturally sought to preserve it, while those who felt disadvantaged sought either to revise it or to abolish it. Nonetheless, many of the provisions of the unwritten National Pact were codified in the Taif agreement and later on in the Constitution, even if the sectarian ratio in Parliament was revised to one of parity between Christians and Muslims, perpetuating sectarianism as a key element of political life.
Currently, a magnificent array of political parties is operating, some pre-dating independence, and the largest are confessional-based. The Phalange Party, the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces have the largest popular base among Christians. On the Muslim side, Hezbollah and Amal are the main parties among the Shiites, while the Progressive Socialist Party leads the Druze. The parties within the Sunni community have always tended to focus on pan-Arab politics and have not played a significant role in shaping local politics. These Sunni parties include the Independent Nasserite organization, the Future Movement and three religious parties: the Jamaa Islamiyya, which is the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Tawheed and the Ahbash.
In addition to these national parties, we find several pan-Arab secular parties such as the Baath and the Communists. These parties played a very active political and paramilitary role in the 1960s and throughout the years of the civil war. However, they seem to have lost a great deal of their popular support to newborn parties such as Hezbollah, the Future Movement and the Free Patriotic Movement.
Lebanon was once seen by most Arabs as an island of democracy and liberty amid Arab dictatorships. This free environment within Lebanon encouraged a political and ideological dialogue between those attached to Arab nationalism and those defending Lebanon’s independence and particularism. It was in the midst of that dialogue that Antoun Saadeh made the only real attempt to establish a secular party in Lebanon. It was known as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and it sought to incorporate Lebanon within Greater Syria.
The crisis of secular parties is emerging as a major barrier to democratic transformation in Lebanon as well as in the Arab world. Since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, the political debate has become broader and very active, with a gradual shift toward sectarianism. The mass media expose citizens to a political horizon wherein the spectrum of viable secular parties is becoming narrower. This phenomenon was reflected in the last parliamentary elections, in which all secular groups and movements failed to achieve a significant presence. This weakness is reflected in a curious blurring of the lines of dialogue between the majority and the opposition. Secular parties caught in the middle suffer at the hands of both the March 14 majority and the March 8 opposition.
There are over 30 political parties and movements in Lebanon today; most of them are simply groups gathered around an ambitious person trying to make a political career. The significant organizations among them remain either feudal or religious in character. In such an environment, secular parties are not acting as political forces that can bring democracy. This deficiency leaves little opportunity to improve the political and socio-economic debate in Lebanon. The crucial dynamics required for such a development will remain missing until secular parties reactivate their role, creating the most needed political reforms. But to do so, they must first change their stagnant leadership and agendas. Nizar Abdel-Kaderis a political analyst and columnist at Al-Diyar newspaper in Beirut. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
