His son, Representative Taymour Jumblatt, was supposed to announce the Chouf-Aley list last Saturday. But Jumblatt the father chose to travel to Paris. Coincidentally, he was on the same plane with Suleiman Franjieh. Its announcement has now been postponed to the end of this week, pending the completion of its candidates. Likewise, the competing list that brings together the coalition of Representative Talal Arslan, the Free Patriotic Movement and former Minister Wiam Wahhab this weekend, following the agreement on their cooperation went a long way before reaching the April 4 closing date for composing the lists.
Those familiar with Jumblatt’s position speak of unprecedented anxiety as he faces many deserving opponents around him, without reassuring much regarding the partners who need him more than he needs them.
The first source of his concern was the second Druze seat in the Chouf, which made him ask former MP Marwan Hamadeh to run once more following expressing his desire to abstain, while the head of the list, Taymour Jumblatt, tended to exclude Hamadeh, preferring him a younger name, his office manager Hossam Harb. Hamada coupled his agreement to return to the list with two conditions: that he obtain all the preferential votes given to Representative Nima Tohme, who is reluctant to run for candidacy, in addition to the votes of non-resident Druze voters. The Druze rival, Hamada’s declared competitor, is Wahhab, a candidate for the Chouf in the list of the tripartite coalition allied with Hezbollah.
After much has been said regarding the 2018 elections, Wahhab’s candidacy at the time, and the contradictory data regarding the votes he won, Jumblatt has doubts regarding the extent to which Wahhab would win votes to seize the second Chaufi Druze seat from him. Thus the confrontation crossed the walls of the selected into the house. It is unprecedented in the history of Mukhtara, since the days of the father, to lose a chaufic Druze seat (except of course in the 1957 elections) that Kamal Jumblatt used to give to one of his most important aide Bahij Taqi al-Din. Mostly equal to the first Druze seat. However, his loss means, on the other hand, that a new Druze Alex Reed has entered into the partnership of the Chouf leadership, and it is no longer confined to Mukhtara alone. What Jumblatt the son offered over the father was that he remained the leader of the Jumblatites, and he wrested from the Yazbeks four historical families belonging to them, so Jumblatt referred them to them: Hamada, Chehib, Aridi, and Bou Faour.
The second source of concern for Jumblatt, who expected his son’s parliamentary bloc to shrink to only four Druze, is the one who mostly holds seven of the eight seats, except in the 2000 elections when he swept them all. In the coming maturity, he will face losing his two Druze seats in Beirut and the western Bekaa in favor of Arslan, without winning the Druze seat in Hasbaya, even though it is in the custody of his friend, President Nabih Berri.
In the May 15 elections, Jumblatt defends half of the Druze seats
According to Jumblatt’s confirmed accounts, his list in the Chouf – Aley, which is allied with the Lebanese Forces party, won seven seats following nine in the 2018 elections. Considered by its numbers and results, Taymour, Hamada and MP Bilal Abdullah won in the Chouf, and MP Akram Chehayeb and his Maronite candidate Raji Al-Saad in Aley, not to mention a Maronite seat. In the Chouf and another Orthodox of the forces in Aley. In the studied numbers for the list of Arslan, Wahhab and Al-Tayyar, four seats are fixed for Arslan and Wahhab and the two deputies Ghassan Atallah and Cesar Abi Khalil. The discrepancy in the numbers brings back confusion and ambiguity around the second Druze seat in the Chouf.
The third source of concern, a reliable Maronite ally from outside the party alliance, was the reason for postponing the announcement of the list on Saturday. Both competing lists are negotiating with the former minister, Naji Al-Bustani, who was a candidate in the 2018 elections and lost because of the outcome. It is calculated in the upcoming elections that he will come to Jumblatt’s list with the eighth score, and to the list of Arslan – Wahhab – the current with the fifth score. He has not yet given an answer, and is reviewing his options: between a previous experience that resulted in Jumblatt’s confession to him that he did not give him votes, so the list paid attention to Druze, Sunni and Catholic candidates as a priority for success, and a new experience that tests its numbers and alliances. In the 2018 elections, Al-Bustani won over the second Maronite, the winner, Mario Aoun, with 121 preferential votes, and over the third Maronite, the winner, Farid Al-Bustani, with 2588 votes.
Naji Al-Bustani’s waiting this week is related to the nature of his cooperation with either of the two lists as an electoral alliance. He will not extend his membership to any of the two parliamentary blocs that are supposed to emerge from the two competing lists. In the end, he will only climb in a bus whose driver improves his leadership, with the certainty that the existing alliances are nothing more than passing electoral, like between the Progressive Socialist Party and the Lebanese Forces, and between Arslan and Wahhab. As soon as they leave the polls, they go in the opposite direction to the other.
The fourth source of concern is Hezbollah’s position on Jumblatt, the father, who has recently been more critical of him. As it is reported from the party, that it will confront Jumblatt without hurting him. This is an implicit indication that he will not enter him in the Mukhtara in the May 15 elections. The significance of the reference may have two interpretations: the first is that he will not be subject to the candidacy of Abu al-Hassan in Baabda, who enjoys the patronage of Berri, but he is regarding to go too far in “reducing” Jumblatt. As for the second, Jumblatt was assured that he would not confront him in his own home, which raises a question mark regarding the significance of Wahhab’s candidacy.
What the party means in manipulating formulas and phrases is that it will not extract from Jumblatt half of his sect’s deputies, but that the Druze leader will lose half of them. An indication of the seats of Beirut, the western Bekaa and Aley, unless Wahhab is added to them. The eighth seats out of reach reside in Hasbaya for Marwan Khair al-Din, who was nominated by the Speaker of Parliament, and he was originally affiliated with Arslan. It will not be in the image of the current deputy of the region, Anwar al-Khalil, in the Berri bloc and close to Jumblatt. Rather, it is intended to deputize Khair al-Din to remove him from Arslan and join the parliament speaker bloc without alienating Jumblatt.
The fifth source of concern is the Sunni vote in Iqlim al-Kharroub. In first estimates, following the retirement of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the Sunni vote’s retreat was likely between 25 to 30 percent. After President Fouad Siniora’s decline, it was reported that the percentage rose to 45 percent, indicative of Hariri’s dominance over the Sunni decision-making in the region, as well as in the Sunni majority areas. Jumblatt is running for the second Sunni seat, Saad al-Din al-Khatib, secretary of the Bar Association, who is close to the Future Movement. In the 2018 elections, the region’s Sunnis, at the behest of Hariri, gave Jumblatt’s list more than 14,000 votes, more than two-thirds of them to MP Muhammad Hajjar. This number, in light of the retreat, is a candidate to deprive Jumblatt of it and his possible loss, the second Sunni candidate.