Affiliated with the University of Nicosia |
|||||
|
|||||
THE POLITICAL CLIMATE IN LEBANON AND THE ARMENIAN LEBANESE COMMUNITY By Arba Jebejian
|
|||||
|
|||||
Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, University of Nicosia |
|||||
|
|||||
Lebanon at last formed its
cabinet on November 10, 2009, following weeks of bickering and a five
month political vacuum since parliamentary elections. The cabinet is
formed of 15 ministers from Prime Minister Saad Hariri's US and
Saudi-backed coalition, 10 from the opposition, backed by Syria and
Iran, and five nominated by the country's president. Lebanon had been without a government since the June
7 parliamentary elections which Hariri’s coalition won. Hariri had
failed during a previous attempt to form a unity government.
The As-Safir daily, which is close to the opposition,
stated that the Hariri government embraces all of Lebanon's sectarian
complexities and rivalries. "It is a government of contradictions, which
either contains a time bomb waiting to explode or will be able to rule
until the end of its mandate," the newspaper said.
The March 14 movement won 71 seats of the 128-seat body, increasing its
parliamentary hold by one. The Hezbollah-led opposition won 57 seats.
Parliamentary seats in Lebanon are divided along sectarian lines.
As Hariri
set out to create a national unity government, the opposition demanded
veto power. The opposition wanted a cabinet that includes 30 ministers,
in which it would have 11 ministers and that would allow them the "veto
third" or the "blocking third," where they could block any major
government decision they did not like. Important issues in Lebanon have
to be decided in the Council of Ministers (cabinet) by a two-thirds
majority.
But Hariri refused such a settlement.
A formula was reached for having a 30-member cabinet divided
thus: 15 ministers for March 14, 10 for the opposition, and 5 for the
president. Under this formula, the parliamentary majority would not have
enough votes to hinder decision taking or the opposition to bring down
the government if it wanted. So, there is this situation where the
president's appointees are the potential referees between the two sides.
The Armenian Lebanese
Community This system of political confessionalism reserves 6
parliamentary seats for Armenian candidates and 2 ministerial posts in
the cabinet. Up till 2001,
the 6 Armenian candidates used to run as one group and formed the
“Armenian Block”. Since
then, however, this unity has been disrupted, and Armenian candidates
are opting to run along with other Christian and Muslim powerful
political figures. This has,
consequently, created tensions and divisions among the different
Armenian political parties and their supporters.
The present Armenian ministers are: Apraham Dedeyan, Minister of
Industry, nominated by the Aoun coalition, and Jean Ogasapian, Minister
of State, nominated by the ruling party. The Armenian presence in Lebanon resulted from a
series of immigration waves during the nineteenth century.
However, the process of these waves reached its peak with the
1915 genocide. A new and
larger wave of Armenian refugees arrived between 1937 and 1940 from
Alexandretta, after the annexation of the latter by Turkey and the
evacuation of Sanjak by the French forces.
Armenian immigration continued in the 1940s from Palestine as a
result of the Arab-Israeli war and the early 1960s from Syria owing to
the Arab nationalist sentiments of its ruling circles which curtailed
cultural and educational rights of the Armenians.
Armenians were granted Lebanese citizenship in 1924
by the French mandate authorities to boost Christian numbers.
In 1926 there were some 75,000 Armenians, and this number played
an important role in the “equitable distribution” of the political and
administrative positions, as the Constitution specified a balance of
political power among the major religious groups.
Accordingly, the presidency was reserved for the Maronite
Christians, the premiership for the Sunni Muslims, the speaker of the
Chamber for the Shiite Muslims, and so on.
In the 1960s and 70s, the Armenians had achieved a
significant degree of economic prosperity.
Armenians virtually monopolized the Oriental rug trade, for
example. Using their
connections with markets in Constantinople, London, and Persia, these
businessmen, many of whom were the sons of Old World rug merchants,
established flourishing wholesale and retail outlets.
This was accomplished through a combination of hard work,
self-reliance, and entrepreneurial ingenuity – attributes that had
served Armenians well in their long history of struggle against
difficult odds. However, economic
well-being was not accompanied by a sense of contentment and happiness.
Several factors were discernible after the mid-1960s as being
responsible for feelings of discontent among Armenians in the diaspora:
the gradual realization of the permanence of diasporic existence, the
persistent concern with the threat of assimilation and loss of identity,
the pervasive feeling of political impotence because of the lack of
national independence, and the deep sense of loss and moral outrage
against Turkey for its persistent denial of the Armenian Genocide. They were the most important Armenian community
outside of the Soviet Union and the United States, counting 175,000 in
1983 eight years after the cycle of violence had started in Lebanon.
This was expressed in the description of the community as the
“most Armenian” of all diaspora communities and as the “second Armenia”.
Unfortunately, there are no official statistics specifying the
present number of Armenian or non-Armenian citizens in Lebanon, for the
last census was conducted in 1932.
The Armenian community adopted a position of
“positive neutrality” during the 16-year-long civil war in Lebanon,
1975-1991. Some militant Lebanese Christians resented the Armenians’
reluctance to join the fight in what was in the early days of the
conflict seen as a Muslim-Christian battle.
The Armenian neutrality paid off.
Throughout the war years, Bourj Hammoud, a predominantly Armenian
neighborhood on the edge of east Beirut, even during the heaviest
artillery shelling of east Beirut remained untouched; however, thousands
along with many other Lebanese sought refuge in Canada, the United
States, France, and other countries.
Existence in the New World Survivors of the Genocide who reached Lebanon recount
how they could not afford the time to study, as they worked to establish
themselves in the new land.
But they considered education for their children of paramount
importance. “Tebrots kena
vor mart ellas” (go to school to be successful/educated/cultured)
was a popular injunction, and older children took jobs to make sure that
their younger brothers and sisters would receive the prized high school
diploma or college degree. Phrases like, “The Armenian school is the home of the
Armenian” and “Armenians’ survival can be ensured only through the
Armenian school”, served as the underlying impetus for the proliferation
of Armenian schools and churches.
At present there are a total of twenty-eight Armenian schools in
Lebanon, three seminaries, three technical centers, two special centers
for the mentally and physically challenged, and one university.
Existence in this new world was supported by the
three political parties that had reorganized themselves after surviving
the Genocide and settling in Lebanon. Besides
the humanitarian efforts of these parties, an important outcome was the
formation of the press. The
first long-lasting Armenian-language daily, Aztag, was
established in 1927 by the Tashnak party.
Zartonk, another daily, dates from 1934 as an organ
of the Ramgavar Party.
Ararad, another daily, was established in 1937 by the Henchag
party. The cultural, social, and educational associations
rely upon the press to advertise their programs, while the newspapers
fill up their pages with reports and photographs of those activities and
sell subscriptions. Most
importantly, the Armenian press contributes to the development of
Armenian pride and sense of community by highlighting the
accomplishments of Armenian individuals around the world and publishing
news of ancient and new Armenian communities around the world, stressing
the longevity and greatness of Armenian culture and reinforcing a sense
of diaspora. Since the
independence of Armenia, more pages are devoted to cover the political
and cultural events in the motherland.
Van and Sevan, two Armenian radio stations in
Lebanon, focus on news about the Armenian communities in Lebanon and the
diaspora, and political, social, and cultural issues in Lebanon and
Armenia. They also attach
great importance to a range of issues and social problems associated
with divorce, parent-child conflict, domestic violence, drug addiction,
and linguistic and cultural retention.
They broadcast news in Arabic and Armenian and music in Arabic,
Armenian, and Greek. The
stations are affiliated with the Tashnak and Hariri-backed political
parties. Also, the O
(Orange) and Al-Mustakbal (Future) television stations owned by Aoun and
Hariri respectively, broadcast daily half-an-hour news program in
Armenian. Conclusion Armenians,
besides the Jews, are the only people that have more members living in
the diaspora than in their own country.
For more than one hundred years now, more than half of the
seven million Armenians in the world have been living in diasporic
communities where they have been subjected to shifts and fluctuations of
language ideologies, ranges of identities, sociopolitical and
socioeconomic trends, and more recently to globalization, consumerism,
explosion of media technologies, and the post-colonial and
post-communist predicament of belongingness.
Consequently, while acknowledging that globalization is
progressively increasing, (with religious fanaticism and political
unrest punctuating recent history, especially in the Middle East),
broadening the range of available options, there is growing concern
among Armenians about ethnic language maintenance, identity, and
culture.
Hence, as
it moves into its second century, the Armenian Lebanese community is
caught in the dilemma common to diaspora communities.
On the one hand, it is being pulled by forces and institutions
inherited from the Old World, and its Armenian consciousness will
continue to be heightened by the destabilization in Lebanon and the
Middle East, the quest for political recognition of the genocide, and
the fear of cultural extinction.
On the other hand, the Armenian Lebanese community has integrated
itself successfully into the economic, social, and political fabric of
the host nation. |
|||||
|
|||||
Cyprus Center for European and
International Affairs Copyright © 2010. All rights reserved
|
|||||
Makedonitissis 46, 2417 Egkomi CYPRUS | P.O.Box 24005, 1700 CYPRUS t: +35722841600 | f: +35722357964 | cceia@unic.ac.cy | www.cceia.unic.ac.cy |