Rami G. Khouri

A fascinating political face-off this week will see demonstrations organized by the “You Stink” movement in Downtown Beirut publicly challenging the National Dialogue organized by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. The movement rejects the dialogue as a waste of time. These two poles of the current national contestation reflect different conceptions of political power and how the Lebanese government should operate. We should not expect immediate verdicts either on the National Dialogue or the You Stink activists. Much more time is needed to reveal if the demands of angry and fed-up citizens enjoy sufficient popular support to force the established old guard to change its frayed ways. If so, Lebanon is in for an exciting and important challenge to the entrenched traditional leaders whose power comes from their share of parliamentary and cabinet seats and government jobs that are apportioned among Lebanon’s 18 different religious groups.

As a long-time observer of Lebanese politics, I find it hard to believe that the same political leaders who brought the government to its knees and brought Lebanon to its current embarrassing state can suddenly change overnight and govern more diligently. The National Dialogue looks, feels and smells a lot like the Palestinian-Israeli “peace process,” something that goes on for years, without any real change.

The important question of how much support the protest movements enjoy among the public cannot be answered by counting how many people demonstrate in Downtown Beirut. By this criterion, the obedient forces of Hezbollah, Amal, the Future Movement and the Free Patriotic Movement will bury the citizen activists every time they take to the streets, as we have seen recently. This is why three new elements of the protest movement’s strategy strike me as significant.

The first is the use of tactics such as symbolic gestures and nonviolent disruption of normal business operations. These include hunger strikes by a few activists, throwing garbage bags at the bottom of the Serail hill, and filling the Environment Ministry’s corridor with passive protesters.

The second is the decision by the Union Coordination Committee coalition of labor and professional syndicates to go on strike Wednesday, coinciding with the National Dialogue. Labor activism, including strikes and protests, tipped the balance against the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes.

The third, announced a few days ago by a new group called the People’s Court, will see criminal complaints filed in court against Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk for being responsible for an environmental disaster.

If such nonviolent resistance tactics and others to come generate mass support and successfully reform the power structure and governance system, Lebanon could well provide an example for other Arab countries to follow – that elusive third way between instant revolution and prolonged civil war. I say this because Lebanese protesters are asking at heart for a validation and reconfiguration of their system of governance. They want the state to work efficiently and equitably and to provide all citizens with their very basic rights, including services such as electricity, water and garbage collection.

The Lebanese demand to be served equitably because that is their right as citizens of a state rather than as members of a religion. Their vision of the role of the state and their rights as citizens is very different from how the establishment men in the National Dialogue regard the citizen and the state.

The protesters want the incumbency of ministers and other officials to be the consequence of doing their job well, which ideally would see Lebanon institute a system of governance based on merit and accountability, rather than blood lines and religiosity. Such an accountable meritocracy would be noteworthy for other Arab states, where the efficient functioning of the state still usually reflects occasional surprise inspection visits to government offices by the caring monarch or benevolent great leader. It remains the case that the single most important reason why citizens revolted against their regimes in the last five years has been the corrupted state’s heavy-handed, uncaring, and inefficient behavior toward its own citizens.

Also relevant to other Arab states is how Lebanese have protested nonviolently to change the way political power is gained and wielded. Several hundred million Arabs who still strive to live in countries that respect them and their rights as citizens are watching Lebanon carefully. They want to see if it successfully implements a third way of national rebirth that avoids both the sudden toppling of regimes as in Tunisia and Egypt, and prolonged chaos as in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

These are ambitious and worthy goals, and tens of thousands of Lebanese have started to work on their behalf in public. Many others in the region are watching to see if at least one Arab society has learned the important lessons of the 2011 Arab uprisings that have resulted in a range of painful conditions, including spreading warfare and rejuvenated police states.