Majority Versus Minority

While watching a debate between MP. Samir Frangieh and Dr. Fawaz Trabolsi, I noticed Dr. Trabolsi skinned Frangieh when he said the majority rule, specially Dr. Trabolsi proved to him that it is a tie, just for the fact they are sitting on the round table. Hence, majority is only by name in parlaiment.

Let us look at the parlaiment, we had different alliances, with Hizbullah supporting Jumblatt's PSP, while again Hariri's list got that support in the North. Every vote counts, and in these two regions indeed every vote counted. Hence, are they really majority with the alliance of Aoun and Hizbullah?

Dr. Trabolsi mentioned two glitches in the system, to which he proposed the people elect directly the president; and he was correct that the maronites can't establish to choose a leader who is a leader of the Sect as well President of the Lebanon at the same time. The first glitch involves the Sectarian Electoral system, which used to elect the parlaiment, and the parlaiment elected the President, but the president got the power to dissolve his (sadly we can't add: /her) electors. The glitch was adjusted to lead to another glitch, the President does not have the authority to dissolve the parlaiment, but is not held accountable to anyone.

Personally, of those few political figures, I think few people preserved their leftism... ie Marxism to be exact. Dr. Trabolsi is one of those, while we see Elias Attallah and Khaled Hdaidi competing with each other on who is more leftism, with the difference the first supports the PM's free trade policies, while the other preaches Pan-Arabism and salutes resistence to Israel from an arabic point of view. Hopefully one day Dr. Trabolsi will be a key figure in a real leftist movement.

It is interesting that Dr. Trabolsi also mentioned that the simplest case to begin with is the investigation of the Syrian Workers who got killed in the reactionary wave, since the ball is 100% in the government and simplest to do. It was a good debate, and I have to admit Samir Frangieh is a good debater, but is stuck in the 14th March framework which makes him a sitting duck. If only the debate was longer ...

MFL