While Nabatiyeh’s Democratic Left-affiliated candidate Mohammad Ali Mokalled feels his individual campaign is too small to attract the kind of bullying faced by more prominent non-opposition Shia parties, he has been pressured over his candidacy. He said he receives “messages” through family and friends involved in local politics – as well as over Facebook. He has also been tarred with the same bush as other, external adversaries, being called a “Zionist” or “American”.

Mokalled is one of a growing number of independent Shia politicians who are using the upcoming elections as a platform to speak out on the situation in the South, national politics and the electoral law – despite facing varying degrees of intimidation for their troubles.

NOW Lebanon spoke with Mokalled along with a representative of the Lebanese Option Gathering and Lebanon Ahead founder Rami Ollaik about their groups and the pressure they face in attempting to chart a path for non-Hezbollah and Amal-affiliated Shia.

An intimidating neighborhood

Lebanese Option Gathering leader Ahmad al-Assaad on Sunday announced his party’s 14 electoral candidates in Jbeil, the South and the Bekaa Valley, saying his movement aimed to encourage “a true competition between two different visions, or two different solutions, or two different budgets.”

Assaad’s announcement came despite his group having faced direct intimidation over recent months. More than ten cars owned by the gathering’s supporters have been set on fire or exploded in various southern villages, most recently on March 27. Assaad’s convoy was also pelted with stones during a visit to the southern town of Sikskiye on March 28.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, when NOW Lebanon asked Zeina al-Akhawi, the movement’s press coordinator, who was behind them, she answered “Hezbollah for sure.” She affirmed that her movement’s leadership had ordered supporters not to respond to the provocations.

Akhawi finds a troubling message in the anonymous attacks. “They are asking for governing all together,” she said of the Hezbollah-led opposition, “but if they cannot accept other Shia in the middle, how can they accept all the others in Lebanon and make a new Lebanon?”

“I think we are the only people, the Lebanese Option and its people, who are against them,” which Akhawi said is the reason her group, in particular, has been targeted. “We are too many; it is disturbing them.”

“They are trying to intimidate us, but they are doing exactly the opposite,” she assured. “They are pushing us to work stronger.” For these reasons, Akhawi said her group has remained “very optimistic” about its prospects in the upcoming elections.

From bee-keeping to campaigning for a middle way

In his most recent incarnation, Rami Ollaik, a Hezbollah member of 12 years turned bee-keeping agricultural specialist at the American University of Beirut, is using the upcoming elections to launch his political career.

Ollaik founded the independent, secular nationalist Lebanon Ahead party in May 2008, which is now a major partner in a group of political organizations and concerned individuals who are running in the upcoming elections as the Coalition for Democratic Civil Forces.

Ollaik’s vision for his independent movement stems from his experiences extricating himself from sectarian politics. “It is possible for any Lebanese, despite the depth of their involvement with any political party, to step out into a more open environment and to look for a better platform, a better Lebanon,” he told NOW from his campaign headquarters in Achrafieh.
 
But this is more difficult in the South, he noted, describing the situation there as one in which “people are afraid to speak out.” “There is an environment of intolerance” in southern Lebanon, he said, in which it is more difficult to sway from the status quo than in other parts of the country.

Indeed, the coalition’s candidates in the South and Baalbek have already “been subject to a lot of pressures from their own families and from other parties in those areas, a lot of pressures... You cannot imagine,” Ollaik said.

“The first attempt was to detach them from our movement, Lebanon Ahead, and our coalition, but it didn’t work out,” he said, praising the steadfastness of the candidates, whose names will be publicly announced on April 13.

Ollaik himself has chosen not to go into direct personal confrontation with Hezbollah by standing for the Shia seat in Jbeil, a city the professor called a “melting pot”, where he hopes his connections will provide a fertile ground for success.

While committed to the original principles of the 2005 Cedar Revolution and to building a strong nation, Ollaik remains firmly independent and is often critical of the March 14 alliance’s “confrontationist stance” toward the Shia population. Ollaik envisages his coalition as a part of a centrist buffer between the March 8 and March 14 forces, which could help end Lebanon’s debilitating political deadlock.
 
The Coalition for Democratic Civil Forces is also raising bread-and-butter issues in its campaign. “Somebody once asked me, ‘What is Lebanon Ahead?’ I said it is having electricity 24/7,” Ollaik said, lamenting that people have become “normalized to just accepting the status quo.”

Ollaik believes his “competitive edge” lies in his origins in the Shia community, because, he says, any change must come from within. He added that he resisted being labeled as part of any political group in order to maintain credibility with that community. “I can go to my village and talk to whoever I want. Even if people do not agree with me, they cannot discredit me,” he said.

“If we want to change Lebanon, we cannot provoke or go into confrontation with Hezbollah. We have to go grassroots, and we have to talk to people in the cities and in the remote villages.”

Running against a monopoly

On March 16, Mohammad Ali Mokalled announced his candidacy for a Shia seat in the district of Nabatiyeh, where he will be running in association with the Democratic Left Movement, a splinter group of the Communist Party.

Mokalled had toyed with the idea of running previously, even announcing a later aborted candidacy in 2005, but this time he insists he is making a serious attempt.

Aware of the difficulties of winning a seat in Hezbollah and Amal-dominated Nabatiyeh, Mokalled told NOW Lebanon that his candidacy is designed as a statement against the 1960 electoral law, readopted last spring during the Doha conference following the opposition’s attempted takeover of West Beirut and other parts of the country.

He is also seeking to send a message closer to home by advocating “against the current situation in the South, where no democracy is practiced, and anyone outside the duality of Hezbollah and Amal is cancelled out.”

But Mokalled has faced pressure through family and friends, and has received threatening messages over Facebook, although Hezbollah did distance itself from the latter incident – the nature of which was not revealed to NOW – when Mokalled confronted the party’s local leadership.

Mokalled, who deplores sectarianism and advocates against it, is concerned that neither the March 14 nor March 8 alliances are serious about state-building. “Give the state back its authority, and you will get rid of all sectarianism and divisions,” he said.

But Mokalled has chosen not to take advantage of laws allowing individuals to remove their confession from their identity cards. “This is not the solution to secularize the country,” he said. “The law should be secular, not the people.”

And these candidates believe the elections should be free from the shackles of confessionalism, too.