Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Jumblatt whining about winning elections

The election within the Order of Engineering last weekend was a clear victory for the March 14 candidates. You'd think Druze leader Jumblatt must be estatic with joy, but the opposite is true: he denounces the results. Why? His candidate, a Shiite, lost.

A political leader who turns out to be a sour loser...so far no problem. In fact, any serious leader should have the drive to win. It's more his comments afterwards that are so striking:

"The mathematic victory has no value whatsoever if it is the result of a politics of exclusion. This outcome (the loss of Jumblatt's candidate - RB) is the result of a new tendency of marginalization that prevails above the many deadlines, a marginalization that contradicts at least the path taken by March 14. That means openness to all communities, including the Shiite community" (translation by me)

OK, exercise for the reader: find quotes from Hezbollah complaining about exactly the same thing, namely a marginalization and exclusion of the Shiites due to to "mathematic victories"!

Democracy normally is about winning based on numbers, as in whoever gets 51% wins. Come to think of it, democracy is quite mathematical. However, March 8 already dissed this principle some time ago. Now it seems Jumblatt is ready to join their ranks by complaining about illusionary (oh sorry: 'mathematic') victories.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

true, but two wrongs dont make a right.Joumblatt was warning against this unfair dismissal on the grounds that the candidate was a shiite.It was a plea not to make politics sectarian in nature. I thought it was quiet decent of him,but who knows Joumblatts real intensions.

Anonymous said...

Jumblatt's candidate didn't lose, he wasn't even nominated. Jumblatt wanted a shiite candidate, but the other 14 march leaders refused. So he was not happy for not having a shiite candidate among the 14 march list. I think it was decent of him. I advice you to check your info well before throwing silly articles.