Building democracy in Lebanon
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2008 17:21
WFD works from its field office in Beirut
In a country on a knife-edge, even contributions to stability can make a difference.
The problem.
Lebanon's democracy has stalled. After recovering from its punishing 1975-1990 civil war the divides at its heart reared up again in the 2006 Israeli-Hizbullah conflict. Prime minister Fouad Siniora found himself confronting Hizbullah's vested interests and their differences could not be resolved by the end of Emile Lahoud's term as president last November. Efforts to find a successor have led to an impasse – and the present ongoing crisis.
The person
David French is chief executive of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a publicly-funded organisation which is doing its bit to help keep Beirut's parliamentary machinery ticking over. WFD coordinates parliamentary and political capacity-building around the world, spending over £4 million of taxpayers' money in the process. Mr French oversees WFD's projects, which focus on sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Europe and now the Middle East, so his efforts are not solely focused on Lebanon. But he knows the situation there is critical.
"Lebanese politics are absolutely on a knife-edge at the moment," he says.
"I think there's a lot of anxiety among ordinary Lebanese about which way this is going to go. They're more likely to solve the problem if they are left alone by the international community – but international battles over Lebanon are an engrained habit."
A small difference for Beirut…
Lebanon is pushing the frontiers for WFD as it's the first country where the organisation has a field office, covering the entire region. It was initially invited to Beirut by the Lebanese parliament before the 2006 conflict, when it helped inform its finance committee work out what Mr Siniora's government were prioritising.
The need for such aid "became only greater after the war", Mr French says. Such assistance guided the parliament's activities against the backdrop of a slowly-growing political crisis, expanding beyond systems of financial oversight.
"It's a good example of where action on a low-profile, practical level equates to real change."
… and the rest of the world
WFD's activities are far from restricted to Lebanon. Since 1992, when it was formed at the request of a small group of MPs, it has helped parliament and political parties get on with the nuts and bolts of democracy. Its approach to the latter has been particularly unique, funding projects in which Labour, the Conservatives and Britain's other parties send groups abroad to help ideologically similar groups abroad.
That worked well in Europe but was less appropriate when WFD broadened its field to include African countries. The result has been more cross-party trips, like a recent project in Sierra Leone. Training sessions, workshops, seminars are often repeated with different bitterly opposed groups but the focus is never evangelical, as Mr French points out.
"This isn't preaching about democracy – this is how you make a political party operate more effectively, how you win elections," he explained.
It's good to talk
Sometimes the unexpected happens. Such a surprise occurred in March 2006, when WFD was holding a workshop in Cairo with around 25 senior figures from Egyptian political life. The event's purpose was to work out how to develop its programme, but a potentially explosive situation developed. The banned Muslim Brotherhood organisation was in the room, as were members of the government.
"Occasionally the volume went up but they were beginning to get to grips with real issues. We had the whole of the political spectrum in the room at the same time and the point was they were talking to each other," Mr French remembered.
"It was very rewarding. We hadn't planned it – we hadn't got them together for political dialogue. But something remarkable happened which turned out to have considerable value."
Support from the top
Mr French says foreign secretary David Miliband's leadership at the Foreign Office has helped the department "sharpen up" its strategic objectives. They fit in with the international community's growing preoccupation with failing states, he says, which conveniently make WFD's work even more important.
"We can make a very specific contribution in addressing the danger that states will come to fail by working on the political institutions," he pressed.
Mr French is not pessimistic about likely democratic trends over the next 30 years. He is worried by Russia's drift away from transparency, but says China will have to "come to terms" with a need for greater openness. India's emergence, he believes, will be a "force for good".
In this context WFD's work in the next ten years will involve fostering such openness in the places it works.
"If over the course of the next decade we can help establish political parties in still-young democracies in Africa on a basis that is more policy-driven and less familial, personality or in some cases tribally-driven then we'll have done something really useful," he finishes.
"If we can work over the next decade with parliaments in the Arab world to help them become stronger, more independent institutions which are less dependent, less subservient to the executive, more able to exercise their responsibility and oversee the executive rather than the other way round, then we'll have done something extraordinary."
David French was talking to Alex Stevenson
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