Fady Rahme, recently elected president of the National Gebran Committee. (Credit: Michel Sayegh)
A new Gebran National Committee was elected on Sunday, Aug. 27, for a 4-year term, with Fady Joseph Rahme as its president.
The vote took place by universal ballot for the first time and included all inhabitants of Bcharri, the hometown of renowned author, Gebran Khalil Gebran.
“Previously each large family* of this northern caza sent its delegates to an electoral college which elected this committee. This time, for the first time, all the inhabitants of the village were invited to elect all the members of the committee directly,” Rahme explained.
The National Committee was created in 1934 by decree of the Ministry of the Interior with the aim of preserving and disseminating the intellectual, literary and artistic heritage of Khalil Gebran.
The recent election coincided with the centenary of the publication of his seminal work, The Prophet, first published in 1923.
Rahme’s list, supported by the Lebanese Forces, won 78 percent of the votes, defeating the independent list. Rahme, whose father was once a committee president, succeeds Joseph Fenianos. Now 60, he returned to Lebanon in 2021, after an international career. He was vice-president of Japan Tobacco International JTI and is currently a consultant and teaches at Sciences Po, from which he graduated.
The new committee plans to continue Gebran’s work through their new program, titled “Towards the second centenary.”
In his will, Gebran (1883-1931) wanted his artistic and cultural legacy to be managed and disseminated from Lebanon by a committee made up of members of the different Bcharri families*. He demanded in clause number 2 that his intellectual property rights also be used to finance scholarships and to provide health aid to the poorest families in the village.
These are the wishes that the newly elected committee, made up of 15 members, wants to apply. The committee respected the quotas of including two representatives from each of the seven main Bcharri families.
The committee's mission is to take care of the museum, which includes 440 pictorial works, books, manuscripts and personal objects that belonged to Gebran, which were brought back from the United States. The committee is also in charge of is be running the free music school and public library, founded between 1975 and 1995.
*The Rahme, Tok, Geagea, Keyrouz, Succar, Fakhri and Chidiac families.
