Lebanon’s supervisory commission for elections will be unable to adequately monitor election campaigning or the vote itself without a funding injection and legislative tools, its president has warned.
The electoral campaign officially started on January 10 but the commission, without a budget, has not been able to hire the 40 or so necessary media observers. “We are ready to work but we need help,” said Nadim Abdelmalak, during an interview in his office with The National.
Mr Abdelmalak described the commission, which has existed in its current form since 2017, as a hypocritical attempt by the Lebanese political class to project an illusion of democracy and accountability.
The 79-year-old retired judge complained that parliament has no desire to make the necessary changes to give more power to the commission despite recommendations it issued following the 2018 elections.
It does not have an independent budget and no power to prosecute offenders including media outlets that give more airtime to one candidate over another, or violations of elections expenditure rules.
Mr Abdelmalak can only direct proof of offences to the judiciary, which is widely viewed as slow and politicised. He said that 45 complaints for media violations registered since the last election in 2018 are still pending at the publications court, which deals with all media matters.
“My hands are tied,” he said. “If I take a decision that cannot be executed promptly, there is no meaning to it.”
“I’ll tell you why this commission was created,” he continued. “It’s to satisfy the international community and say that Lebanon is working according to transparency and accountability, but unfortunately that is only in name.”
The cabinet met on Monday for the first time in more than three months and is discussing the 2022 budget this week. The supervisory commission for elections has asked the Interior Ministry to allocate it 5,8 billion Lebanese pounds, or around $250,000 at the market rate, plus $75,000 for technical equipment.
We don’t want to destroy everything
Nadim Abdelmalak,
president of the supervisory commission for elections
The commission faces eviction because the Interior Ministry has not paid the rent for its offices for 2021 and 2022 — a total of around $6,000. “I ask any organisation to help us, even if it’s just to pay the rent,” said Mr Abdelmalak.
“The international community always says they’ll support us when I meet them but unfortunately I haven’t seen one penny,” he said. “We want to exercise and achieve our mission completely, but give us work tools.”
George Adwan, the head of parliament’s administration and justice committee, told The National that while he agreed the commission should be given more power, it still had enough leeway to properly supervise the election.
He said that parliament was unable to reform the 2017 electoral law because it was “divided” between “those who wanted a completely new electoral law and those who wanted to keep it with [some] reforms.”
Complaints about a lack of follow-up by the judiciary of elections violations should be addressed in a separate law that pertains to the independence of the judiciary, said Mr Adwan.
But civil society and pro-reform political groups agree with Mr Abdelmalak’s assessment. “There is no political will to empower the SCE,” said Ali Sleem, executive director of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections.
Even without its financial difficulties, the commission faces a daunting task this year. Scheduled for May 15, the parliamentary elections will be held amid an unprecedented economic collapse described by the World Bank as among the worst in the world since the mid-19th century.
The elections are widely seen as a test for traditional political parties. Opposition groups are aiming to capitalise on the momentum of the crisis, which is generally blamed on widespread corruption among Lebanon’s main parties.
“After such a catastrophic year and the huge collapse that occurred, this government should have made financing the elections a top priority,” said Hussein Al Achi, Secretary General of Mintashreen, a political party borne from nationwide anti-government protests in 2019.
“The supervisory commission is not able to secure fair elections,” added Mr Al Achi. “We have big anxieties and fears regarding ballot counts.”
Vote tampering and vote buying have reportedly plagued past elections in Lebanon. Asked whether he feared that such illegal practices would increase this year with the crisis, Mr Abdelmalak said that with 70 or 80 per cent of people living in poverty “this is something natural.”
Political infighting has paralysed state decisions and compounded the country’s financial meltdown. The hiatus of cabinet meetings between October 2021 and January had a knock-on effect on the elections’ supervisory commission, as the government did not issue a decree to renew its members six months before the elections as it should have.
In January, the Ministry of Interior decided to keep the previous commission in place. It currently has eight members instead of 11.
“One resigned because he was assigned to the constitutional council, another didn’t show up after the general election in 2018, and one lady went abroad,” said Mr Abdelmalak.
The commission is made up of a mix of judges, lawyers, electoral experts and representatives of civil society and the media. The Interior Ministry did not respond to The National’s requests for comment.
Current members, including its president, have not been paid since 2019. This has created a divide between three of the commission’s clerks, who are UN employees, and the rest of the staff which is paid in Lebanese pounds. The local currency has crashed in the past two years.
Because they are paid in dollars, the clerks' salaries are now worth four times more than Mr Abdelmalak’s normal salary. He said he lives off his monthly pension — now the equivalent of $250.
“I’m sorry to say that I’m paying for the expenses of this office with the aid of some of my colleagues,” he said. “This is a catastrophe.”
The UNDP clarified that the three clerks are not civil servants but were recruited as UN volunteers and deployed to support the supervisory commission for elections in 2017.
The UNDP told The National in an email that it would continue providing advisory and technical assistance to the commission for the forthcoming elections this year.
Mr Abdelmalak and his team have contemplated resigning but he feels morally obligated to stay. Should the commission step down, the constitutional council would nullify electoral results. “If we resign now, there will be no general election,” he said.
“We don’t want to destroy everything.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Indoor cricket World Cup:
Insportz, Dubai, September 16-23
UAE fixtures:
Men
Saturday, September 16 – 1.45pm, v New Zealand
Sunday, September 17 – 10.30am, v Australia; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Monday, September 18 – 2pm, v England; 7.15pm, v India
Tuesday, September 19 – 12.15pm, v Singapore; 5.30pm, v Sri Lanka
Thursday, September 21 – 2pm v Malaysia
Friday, September 22 – 3.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 3pm, grand final
Women
Saturday, September 16 – 5.15pm, v Australia
Sunday, September 17 – 2pm, v South Africa; 7.15pm, v New Zealand
Monday, September 18 – 5.30pm, v England
Tuesday, September 19 – 10.30am, v New Zealand; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Thursday, September 21 – 12.15pm, v Australia
Friday, September 22 – 1.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 1pm, grand final
The biog
Favourite Emirati dish: Fish machboos
Favourite spice: Cumin
Family: mother, three sisters, three brothers and a two-year-old daughter
Dust and sand storms compared
Sand storm
- Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
- Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
- Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
- Travel distance: Limited
- Source: Open desert areas with strong winds
Dust storm
- Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
- Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
- Duration: Can linger for days
- Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
- Source: Can be carried from distant regions
Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
Company%20Profile
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20myZoi%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202021%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Syed%20Ali%2C%20Christian%20Buchholz%2C%20Shanawaz%20Rouf%2C%20Arsalan%20Siddiqui%2C%20Nabid%20Hassan%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20staff%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2037%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Initial%20undisclosed%20funding%20from%20SC%20Ventures%3B%20second%20round%20of%20funding%20totalling%20%2414%20million%20from%20a%20consortium%20of%20SBI%2C%20a%20Japanese%20VC%20firm%2C%20and%20SC%20Venture%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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