Michael Karam: Lebanese presidential candidate’s parallels with Donald Trump

Lebanon's presidential hopeful Michel Aoun has much in common with Donald Trump, writes Michael Karam.

The problem with the US Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump is not Mr Trump per se; the fault lies with his millions of supporters who are convinced he can turn their lives around. He promised he would and they are apparently taking that to the bank. I heard someone say the other day that Mr Trump is “the wrong answer to the right question”. I’m not sure I entirely agree, but over 8,000 kilometres away at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the embattled Lebanese public is saddled with a beast of a similar kidney.

Michel Aoun, the founder of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and one of two politicians vying for the presidency in a bid to end a two-year political crisis that has contributed to Lebanon’s economic malaise, is also seen as a maverick who can overturn the status quo. His supporters, like Mr Trump’s, are mainly Christian (but only because Lebanon is sectarian and Mr Aoun, like all presidential hopefuls, is a Maronite) and want to see an end to the corrupt politics that has been the stock in trade of either feudal political families or the ageing warlords who made fortunes during the 1975-90 civil war. In other words they want change. Lebanon needs it, but perhaps Mr Aoun isn’t the most suitable agent to effect it.

Unlike the average Trump supporter, Aounists tend to be professionals – doctors, engineers and the like – who threw their lot in with the retired army commander when he returned from 15 years of exile in Paris in 2005 after the so-called Cedar Revolution, when he offered a secular and transparent alternative to a tranche of the Christian electorate.

But both men have, in their own way, exploited the very people who may (in the case of Mr Aoun it is looking increasingly likely) give them their respective presidencies. Mr Trump has lied; made outrageous promises on which he surely cannot deliver on; and has styled himself as the man to resuscitate the US economy and create jobs. For his part, Mr Aoun has been less flamboyant – he is after all 83 – but he has reneged on his pledge to be a politician for all Lebanese and allied the FPM with many of the pro-Syrian parties, most notably Hizbollah, that he opposed in exile.

That was pretty shameless, but it is his phoney commitment to make the economy a priority and end corruption that sticks in the craw. Mr Aoun, along with his allies in Hizbollah, have perpetuated the current political crisis, a two-year hiatus, during which time Mr Aoun claimed to be fighting for Christian rights, but which only succeeded in stalling all but the most basic political activity; and this at a time when Lebanon found itself shouldering the biggest burden in the worst refugee crisis the world can remember, with nearly 2 million Syrians currently domiciled in the country. The FPM may talk a good fight, but in reality it has thrived on conflict and obstructionism.

Mr Aoun also has a funny understanding of transparency. His son-in-law, Gebran Bassil, is the president of the FPM and the current foreign minister. Before that the baby-faced Mr Bassil held two other key ministerial posts, energy and telecoms. Adored by the party faithful because he is, at 46, relatively young and seen as a modern technocrat, he has nonetheless attracted allegations of corruption amid revelations of unexplained sudden wealth. The other son-in-law is a senior army commander, who was pushed by Mr Aoun to be head of the army. No conflict of interest there then.

Sunday was the 26th anniversary of the day Mr Aoun, then a wartime interim prime minister, fled the presidential palace for France as the Syrian army advanced. At a rally in downtown Beirut, he pledged to make Lebanon “safe and prosperous” should he be returned to the scene of the most notorious incident of his political career, this time as the real deal.

Like my friend said: right question, wrong answer.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.

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