A voter casting their ballot in Achrafieh during the municipal elections on May 8, 2016. Photo Michel Sayegh/L'Orient-Le Jour
"You have my full confidence." It was with this brief phrase that former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri tasked Fouad Boutros with choosing twelve Beiruti Christian figures to add to a list of twelve Muslim figures in preparation for the May 1998 municipal elections — the first following the Civil War.This move led several political analysts to call Hariri "the father" of the Islamic-Christian balance within the capital's municipal council. A little over a quarter of a century later, this golden rule, adhered to during all subsequent consultations (2004, 2008, and 2016), seems to be in jeopardy, just weeks before the upcoming country-wide municipal elections, scheduled for May 18 in Beirut.Hariri tried to preserve this carefully curated balance with the phrase "Zay ma hiyeh [as is]," asking voters to place the full list of candidates as...
"You have my full confidence." It was with this brief phrase that former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri tasked Fouad Boutros with choosing twelve Beiruti Christian figures to add to a list of twelve Muslim figures in preparation for the May 1998 municipal elections — the first following the Civil War.This move led several political analysts to call Hariri "the father" of the Islamic-Christian balance within the capital's municipal council. A little over a quarter of a century later, this golden rule, adhered to during all subsequent consultations (2004, 2008, and 2016), seems to be in jeopardy, just weeks before the upcoming country-wide municipal elections, scheduled for May 18 in Beirut.Hariri tried to preserve this carefully curated balance with the phrase "Zay ma hiyeh [as is]," asking voters to place the full list of candidates...