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The Day of Fortune

May 7th, 2009. Nejmeh Sport Club’s stadium is bustling with thousands of visitors. They wave club flags and the stadium reverberates with their cheers. The visitors are not here for the love of sports, nor is the space being used for its normal purpose. Today the Nejmeh stadium hosts the club’s patron, Saad Hariri, who is also the leader of the Future Movement. He is here to announce the list of candidates for the March 14Alliance for Beirut’s second and third electoral districts¹⁰².

The green turf which on ordinary days only the players are allowed to tread is packed with hundreds of plastic chairs for the audience. The chairs surround a raised wooden platform especially constructed for media personnel and cameramen. The stadium’s concrete terraces have also been transformed, as the normally burgundy stripes that match the team’s colours have been painted blue for this special event.

On one side of the stadium, there is another wooden stage which is separated from the rest of the audience and patrolled by security personal. This large platform is a white-floored theatre-like space. On it speakers are seated in front of huge images of the assassinated leader Rafic Hariri, and the blue rays of the Future Movement’s sun shaped logo. Facing the platform seats are provided for select invitees, namely the social, economic and political elite, including a few of Nejmeh club’s board members.

102 The stadium was an ideal site for such an electoral event with its ample space and central location. It was rented from the club's board by Salim Diab who was leading the Future Movement's electoral campaign and was ex-general co-ordinator of the movement, and incidentally Honorary President of Ansar Club, Nejmeh's long time rival. But it is not only location and size that are of relevance to the choice of the stadium. Nejmeh club had won Lebanon’s football championship on 26/4/2009, less than 10 days before the rally, and Riyadi club, also under Hariri’s patronage and whose stadium is a few meters away, won the country’s basketball championship in the same week. Additionally, and as was emphasised by Saad Hariri in his speech, it was the site where two years previously parliamentarian and Future Movement member Walid Eido, was assassinated by a bomb planted for him as he passed by the southern wall of the stadium. Two of Nejmeh’s players were killed with him. See figure 29.

Thousands of Hariri supporters fill the rest of the stadium in what feels more like a carnival than a political event. Loud speakers play songs dedicated to Rafic Hariri and his son, Saad. These songs have become the familiar sound track of the whole elections period. One song promises that the paths that Hariri senior took will continue, asserting that his spirit is never absent¹⁰³. The other entitled ‘The Day of

Fortune’ (yawm al-saʿd)¹⁰⁴, especially written for Saad Hariri, plays on the young leader’s name, Saad, meaning happiness or fortune. It describes him as free, proud, and more precious than one’s own offspring.

Unlike the traditionally serious political and nationalist songs, these lively songs are similar in tune to the popular Arab dance rhythms, and along with the colourful flags and the sunny day they reinforce the celebratory ambience.

The people present are of all ages and both genders. Teenage boys are taking the chance to flirt with girls who do not have many opportunities of meeting up with the opposite sex in public. Little kids enjoy the space, the flags, and the music. Chitchat amongst old friends and coincidental meetings give the feeling that one is in a neighbourhood café. I use my video camera and almost everyone is tolerant of my filming.

Mothers pose with their little daughters for photos, and young men in flirtatious mood, ask that I appear with them in the footage. Boys with drums play, dance, and stand on the chairs and repeatedly disobey the requests for calm.

At first glance, I get the impression that there are more women and teenage boys present, and relatively fewer men. Soon though, I realise that the men are here in different capacities, as camera men in the centre of the field, as uniformed guards all around the turf, organising the crowds, and in suits seated on the front seats. Kamel, a supporter of the Future Movement, from the neighbourhood of Tariq Al-Jadidah, describes to me the different uniforms and what they mean. Some are for the Future Movement members and others for employees of Secure-Plus, a private security company affiliated with Hariri. The former are elegant in grey suits and neck ties while the latter have a military appearance wearing caps, beige shirts carefully tucked in, navy multi-pocketed trousers and combat boots¹⁰⁵.

The celebration lasts for a whole hour as we wait for the candidates, and although I expect that quiet will reign once the speeches start, this does not happen. Huge screens on both sides of the stadium have been installed to project the speeches of Saad Hariri and allied candidates. This is how those on the turf are

103 For one of the many versions of the song available online see http://youtu.be/zN8W5ua7Zf8 (Accessed 24/2/2015). While the words of this song, like the rest of the Hariri promoting media deserves analysis beyond the scope of this thesis, of relevance to this chapter are phrases describing Hariri as the foundation of 'the civilised Beirut'(al- ḥaḍarīah) and 'Lebanon's renaissance' (nahda).

104 See http://youtu.be/6Puc8l74Vos - Accessed 24/2/2015.

105 Despite expressing regret that he was unable to join the Future Movement officially due to restrictions imposed on him by his employer, Kamel also wore the navy trousers and beige shirt – though by not tucking his shirt in he differentiated himself from the officially affiliated members.

able to see the candidates on the far side of the stadium. In the hour long wait for the candidates to arrive, these screens have been projecting edited images of the young leader and his late father, as well as footage of the famed demonstrators in downtown Beirut on 14 March 2005 who protested at the assassination of Rafic Hariri. Live footage of the stadium itself is being relayed, taken of course with a wide angle lens which accentuates the size of the crowd.

Loud cheering accompanies the entry of Saad Hariri, despite those of us on the turf only being able to see him on the screens. Hearing the speeches that follow, the crowd selectively choose to only hear the words that are worthy of their applause; ‘Beirut’ , ‘dignity’, and ‘pride’ are inevitably repeated often to deliberately stimulate clapping. Between the drumbeats and the clapping not much else can be heard. The fact that people can not hear the speech or the names of particular candidates is beside the point. They are in the rally and are sure to vote for the whole list ‘as it is’ or as said in Arabic ‘zay ma hiyye’; these were the instructions of Saad Hariri - identical to the instructions of his father before him.

The magnitude of the electoral event can be felt rippling out into the surrounding area. Close by, the seaside Café Rawda has also hung out its own welcoming banner for the event, speaking on behalf of Beirut

‘which welcomes the son of he who reconstructed it’. The Ferris wheel of the adjacent amusement park – which is closed for today – is decorated with a large full length portrait of Hariri senior. The walls of a nearby store provide the backcloth for a portrait of assassinated parliamentarian, Eido, and his son.

Alongside, a ten meter long banner is displayed; it bears Future Movement slogans proclaiming the movement’s mission statement: ‘the state, security, prosperity, the constitution, and justice’.

Figure 28: Aerial photograph of the Nejmeh Sports Club stadium in Manara.¹⁰⁶

106 Source: Website of Nejmeh Sports Club http://www.nejmeh-club.com/?page_id=221 accessed 19/9/2015.

Figure 29: Nejmeh stadium transformed on the day of the 2009 parliamentary electoral rally of the Future Movement.

Introduction

Saad Hariri, along with the complete list of candidates that he announced on the day I describe, won the seats of Beirut’s second and third district. This came as no surprise, and was expected even by opposing political actors whose participation in the elections was more of a set performance than a genuine competition. Despite many taking pride for years in the country being the so-called ‘only Arab democracy’, the consolidation of the elite and the exclusion of challengers¹⁰⁷ meant that the distribution of parliamentary seats was to a large extent decided upon by the way the electoral law was configured before the elections. In common with Lebanese parliamentary elections, the elections of Nejmeh’s board members also often had predetermined results. As I explain in the next section, elections were held regularly and in accordance with the club’s bylaws, but the key members who had power over other General Assembly members usually agreed beforehand on the list of names to be nominated for the board. The majority of the club’s boards were in fact elected uncontested, yet the actual elections process continued to take place and

bureaucratic electoral procedures were strictly followed.

In this chapter I explore both the practice and the understanding of Lebanese elections, at the national level and at club level. Looking particularly at the relationships between Saad Hariri - seen as a quintessential example of a state elite member - and his supporters, I discuss the practice and function of elections within a socio-political power-sharing system largely organised around clientelistic networks. I argue that the electoral process itself, and the performative opportunities it provides, serve several complementary functions. I show how, far from being an antidote to clientelism, elections contribute in various ways to strengthening of the ‘clientelist habitus’ (Rutten 2007; Auyero 2012) even before the results are declared. In addition, the electoral process is an opportunity for the performance of the patron’s power over his followers as well as over other contestants. The ability to mobilise followers is needed with respect to both co-members of the political elite and to external powers. The assessment of both groups is decisive in negotiations to allocate parliamentary seats.

107 The consolidation of the elite, as El-Husseini (2004: 243) describes is a result of a longer term process which involves three movements labeled as elite settlement, elite convergence, and co-optation, eventually resulting in 'the consolidation of those elites in place in the system and the exclusion of challengers'.

Also central to that performance is the utilisation of a global image – promoted and

shaped by the media - of the bureaucratic implementation of elections. In the past year this image almost always included the smiling faces of voters from across the globe parading electoral ink on their fingers, often shown to be synonymous with democratic

representation. This image is closely tied to the neoliberal ideology of the ‘good life’ which the Hariris, father and son, promoted and enacted in Lebanon.

In current debate about whether the ‘state’ in Lebanon does or does not exist, especially in a context involving widespread corruption, sectarianism and clientelism, Leenders affirms the importance of studying the state and its bureaucratic institutions and the way they are utilised by the politicians in determining access to resources and privileges to existing elite members. According to him, ‘the state’s omnipresence constituted a major ingredient of the elite’s strategies aimed at self-enrichment and political outmanoeuvring of their rivals’

(2012: 231). In the same vein, I argue that elections, and their attendant bureaucratic procedures, not only work to limit political competition and facilitate seat allotment between existing elite members, but they also legitimise such means of power distribution both at the popular and the bureaucratic level. In so doing they also provide a vehicle for the strengthening of sectarian and clientelistic loyalties. The following section documents the ways in which elections are practised in Lebanon, and notes how these issues are discussed in the relevant literature. I situate that discussion within a broader anthropology literature of the state, particularly that which has considered the desire for, and the fantasy of, the state (Taussig 1992; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Jansen 2014).

The third section returns to a consideration of Nejmeh club. It describes the two elections that took place in the ‘Hariri Era’ and the instrumental use of official bureaucratic

discourse and the procedures used to ensure the Hariri establishment’s complete control over the club. I also take account of some of the existing routes available to members to lobby for the changes they wanted made in the club. The fourth section looks at the 2009 parliamentary elections in Beirut in which both Saad Hariri and Ghandour were competing candidates. By reviewing the electoral process, the roles of various workers in the electoral machine, Hariri’s electoral rally and the election day itself, I explore both the way elections were practiced and perceived by Hariri’s followers and the way in which the campaign’s framing of elections fed into the strengthening of Hariri’s political position and patronage.