‘Beirut Madinati 2025' presents its list ‘against coalition of parties'
The list Beirut Madinati 2025 officially presented its candidates on Wednesday during a gathering of a few 100 people at Martyr's Square, downtown Beirut, 10 days before the municipal elections in the capital (May 18). The list is supported by the National Bloc, of which four members are included, the Li Watani coalition and the Madinati party. It is endorsed by members of the protest parliament, Ibrahim Mneimneh, Paula Yacoubian and Melhem Khalaf, all present at the gathering.
These supporters have participated in developing the reform project supported by the list, partly finance its campaign and have chosen the 24 candidates: Levon Televizian, Anita Vartanian, Pierre Vartanian, Najwa Baroudi, Sarah Mahmoud, Christy Assaily, Marie Daou, Paula Rbeiz, Marc Tueini, Lina Jarrous, Georges Kiriakos, Mazen Houssami, Souha Mneimneh, Lama Wazzan, Ghina Kassem, Fady Darwish, Mounir Mabsout, Bilal Ramadan, Amal Sherif, Riyad Arnaout, Zeina Mouqaddem, Ihab Hammoud, Jihane Rizk and Antoine Raheb.
The list aims to succeed the previous Beirut Madinati list from the 2016 municipal elections, which surprised everyone by garnering nearly 35 percent of the votes but failed to secure any seats.
"Our main opponent is the list of the coalition of parties," Mneimneh explained to L'Orient-Le Jour. "All attempts to gather the parties to form the municipal council have been unsuccessful" in improving the residents' daily lives, he argued. "As long as there is no unified vision for the city and a common action program, nothing will move forward," the deputy concluded.
The 24 members of the list – mostly composed of civil society members (lawyers, engineers, financial experts, entrepreneurs and social actors) – are committed to working on the development of the public transportation network, sidewalks, greenery, fighting against corruption, ensuring security and fighting for justice, at a time when the investigation into the double explosion at the port in 2020 that devastated large parts of the capital is still struggling to progress.
'Residents just want a safe city'
This list observes gender parity as well as confessional parity. "The problem is not confessional parity, but the quota system among parties," explained Darwish, head of the list, to L'Orient-Le Jour, at a time when confessional overbidding is coming from all sides amid fears of a break in the Islamic-Christian parity within the capital's municipal council. According to an unwritten custom, it is composed of 12 Christian members and 12 Muslims.
"By ensuring confessional parity, we prevent the debate from stalling at this stage, which benefits traditional political parties," said Michel Helou, secretary-general of the National Bloc and former executive director of L'Orient-Le Jour. The same sentiment was echoed by Paula Yacoubian, who said she fears that parties will once again manage to convince voters to vote for them just because they guarantee confessional parity. "Residents just want a safe city, with greenery, sidewalks and sewers," she explained.
This is the case of Jawad Makarem, a father who once again came to support a protest list in the elections. "We feel a wind of change, and we believe in it: In 2016, no one thought that a list outside the traditional parties could break through, and today the protest lists are taken seriously everywhere," he said. On Sunday, May 4, during the municipal elections in Mount Lebanon, the protest was nonetheless eclipsed.
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