When Corporate Spending Turns Political

An interesting article out of Canada:

Corporate sponsors are paying for hundreds of supporters of the pro-Western Future Movement in Calgary and in other Canadian cities to vote on June 7, CBC News has learned.

The way the Future Movement coordinator in Canada puts it, it seems these companies can write the expense off as CSR:

“This is a big election, and it is a lot of people who [would] love to vote but they cannot vote because of funds … so those companies are making it easy for them,” said Faouzi Salem, a Future Movement co-ordinator in Calgary.

“There [are] sponsors in the world who [pay] for those tickets … European companies, Middle Eastern companies who … they would love to see free Lebanon, independent Lebanon. They want to see democratic government in the future, so they’re dedicating all their supports.”

As for the other side:

…they’re doing the same thing, no? They’re taking people from all over the world,” said Salem.

Oh in that case, its got to be right. I mean if God’s Party is doing it…

Update – June 2, 2009: Experts express concerns over Canadians flying to Lebanon to vote

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Ladies & Gentlemen, We Have Lift Off

This is it; the final leg of the election campaign and the expats are flocking in:

Lebanese expatriates have started arriving in Beirut to vote in crucial parliamentary elections that could decide the future of the country.

According to the Qatari newspaper:

…planes were arriving in Beirut full of expatriates from different parts of the world to vote in next Sunday’s elections.
“Most of the passengers are coming from the nearby Gulf states,” [an official at Beirut’s international airport] said without giving details about the expatriates’ electoral allegiance.

Curious. How would an official at the airport know a person’s electoral allegiance? It doesn’t seem that he told the journalist, “I have no idea” or “how would I know” but instead said “I can’t tell you”.

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Give a Man a Fish…

…and he’ll run for MP:

For fisherman Mahmood Khaled, nicknamed Abu Karam, it’s all about standing up for Lebanon’s poor and downtrodden.

“I have no offices and no money,” the mustachioed 47-year-old father of 15 told AFP.

Khaled admitted that he has little chance of making it into parliament but hopes his campaign will nonetheless force politicians to pay attention to residents of northern Lebanon, many of whom live below the poverty line.

“I am the candidate of the poor and also the poorest of the candidates,” his campaign ads proclaim.

I’m sure we all heard about Ghassan Al-Rahbani and Pierre Hashash throwing in their hats, but this is the first I heard about Abu Karam. If anything, I would vote for him just to make a point against the political establishment. If he does win, I’m sure he’ll be quite busy and won’t have time to add more recruits to his army of 15 kids.

At least he’s got someone’s vote:

“I would vote for the fisherman because he’s the antithesis of everything else available, which hasn’t done us any good for years now,” said Hiba Sahyouni, a 28-year-old anthropologist.

“He’s kind of speaking back and he deserves a chance.”

I’ll be keep an eye out and report Abu Karam’s result.

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Thumbs Up from the Time’s

Time Magazine has given rave reviews to the current political play titled: The Suleiman Era.

Expectations were low when the former head of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman, became president in May 2008 after a nearly two-year political crisis that ended in pitched battles between rival militias in the streets of Beirut.

Apparently, they are comparing his ‘rule’ to Rudolph Giuliani who employed a “Broken Glass” policy whereby he focused on the grassroot issues in the hope improvements would spread to greater issues.

Unable to solve the big problems facing the country, Ziad Baroud, Suleiman’s choice to lead the powerful Ministry of the Interior, began focusing on problems that might actually make a difference in the lives of average Lebanese. In particular, the police began cracking down on the single biggest cause of death in the country: not terrorism, or war, but traffic accidents. After years without traffic enforcement, Lebanon’s roads were dysfunctional and dangerous, with stoplights often ignored and one-way traffic directions optional, and too many drivers acting like they’re on the Autobahn.

The Time also goes on to say that the Lebanese Army is being properly upgraded for the first time in post-civil war history thanks to a consensus on both sides (Israel & the US on one side and Syria & Iran on the other) concerning the issue.

Meanwhile, the country has for now managed to avoid the worst of the global financial crisis, thanks to the conservative policies of its central bank governor, Riad Salame, who banned the exotic financial instruments and over-leveraged practices that became common in the rest of the world. While Salame took office before President Suleiman came to power, the validation of his banking policies are adding further shine to the reputations of the country’s non-partisan officials.

The Time seems to conceed that things are actually going extremely well.

Suddenly, Lebanon feels like an island of stability in a world upside down.

Wow, everything is perfect! This is too good to be true. Oh wait, it isn’t:

In the end, Lebanon’s fate is out of the hands of even its best and brightest. While tempers may remain calm as leaders in Washington and Tehran test the waters of engagement, Lebanon can’t have a separate peace of its own for long. So there’s one more reason for Lebanese to fasten their seat belts: if the Obama administration can’t pull off a regional peace deal, there may well be another civil war.

Well, it was a good run while it lasted.

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Shake a Hip, Win an Election

That seems to be the gist of it in South Africa:

[African National Congress treasurer-general Mathews] Phosa was confident of a convincing ANC win in the election, as was Mashatile, who predicted a large majority.

This was said during the ANC function in Johannesburg on Saturday night. Phosa was saying this as he was…

…clapping in time to the beat as Lebanese belly dancer “Taryn” whirled in a shimmering gold outfit.

Now only if Hezbollah would recruit Haifa, things would get a little interesting here.

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