 Lebanon is set to hold elections on May 15. Parties are readying for a campaign, but there is very little enthusiasm among the people for this round of polls. A major reason for the lack of enthusiasm is the feeling that no meaningful change can come from this process. The elections are taking place after a particularly difficult few years of a severe economic crisis and the disastrous explosion in Beirut. Rania Khalek of Breakthrough News analyzes the coming elections and why there is very little excitement among the people. Well, the last two years in Lebanon have been very difficult economically. The country is undergoing an economic collapse. It's being called one of the worst depressions in modern history. And of course, the upcoming elections, as important as the international community feels they are, they really don't seem to be on the minds of most Lebanese because they feel they know that nothing will change. The system is the same. The parties, the political parties are the same. And there's no real hope to change them. The stagnation kind of just continues along. What would inspire all but the most diehard ideological supporters of these political parties to vote anyways, like that's who's going to be voting. So it seems like maybe mainly Western governments care about these elections because in the West, the ritual of going to vote and legitimizing the system is treated as this kind of like religious obligation that epitomizes democracy. And there's a belief among Hisbola and its supporters and allies that the West wants these elections to weaken the free patriotic movement or FPM, which is one of the largest Christian parties in Lebanon and is an ally of Hisbola. And they also feel that the West wants to weaken the other non-Shia allies of Hisbola using these elections. And people believe the West has given up on weakening Hisbola directly. And that's why they want so badly to break these alliances that Hisbola has with such a strong Christian party like FPM. And the FPM itself admits that it'll lose some seats in parliament, though it expects to remain the strongest Christian party. So there's this really like intense competition in Lebanon right now between Christian parties this year. And they seem unable to form alliances. So both those parties, both the ones close to the West and those closer to Hisbola are expected to lose seats. So not just FPM. And then you have the Sunni community. And I would say that the Sunni community in Lebanon right now is more divided than ever. There's no really nationwide party for Sunnis anymore. Now that Assad Hadid has withdrawn, at least for now, from politics and taken the future party with him. So it'll only be local Sunni politicians, meaning a weak result for Sunnis. And even Hisbola actually expects to lose some of its supporters to not other people necessarily gaining more votes, but to those who just want to boycott the vote. So not out of opposition to Hisbola necessarily, but out of a kind of cynicism about elections, making a difference and a real frustration with Hisbola's cooperation with parties that are viewed by the vast majority of people in the country as corrupt, meaning FPM and also ML, the other Shia party. So elections may just kind of enshrine the same order and politicians, in which case why hold them, right? That's the thinking of a lot of people. And the West had placed its bets and its money on the so-called civil society and these kind of Western allied parties who were loud during the uprising that you referenced in 2019. But these parties, these groups, they have no real clear agenda apart from representing a shrinking liberal middle class. And so it's unlikely they'll really get any support at all. They might gain a few seats, what they'll call independent seats, but nobody really thinks they'll gain much more than that. So that's all to say, you know, Hisbola remains the most popular political party in Lebanon. In fact, it even sacrifices seats in favor of its allies in order to help them out. And, you know, there was a speech given recently by Hisbola leader Hassan Nasrallah about the election, saying that these elections will in fact take place and, you know, we're not forcing candidates for these elections. So, you know, that's pretty much what we're at in Lebanon right now. It's these elections, we're just going to kind of enshrine the same system that we have with maybe a few slight modifications. For a long period of time, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies played a vital role in the politics of Lebanon by backing certain leaders associated with the Sunni community. In recent years, this support has dried up as the Saudi strategy has largely failed in the country. What is the approach of Saudi Arabia and its allies likely to be in this election? The current strategy of the Gulf monarchies led by Saudi Arabia, it's really Saudi Arabia strategy we're talking about here, is let Lebanon burn. The Saudis have really just like divested from Lebanon and given up on the idea of having local puppets in Lebanon. Their biggest puppet used to be Saad Hadidi, but he was a huge failure for them on a number of levels. And now he's withdrawn from politics. And there's no one who's stepped in to take his place, though people are trying. It's all local though. There's, you know, Bahat Hadidi, who's Saad Hadidi's brother, but it's kind of like the dumber brother, if you will, of the Hariri clan, who's trying to be the Sunni leader he's based in. But it's mostly like localized to Saida in southern Lebanon. There's Ashraf Rifi and Tripoli. There's Fahad Magzumi, who's this billionaire Sunni politician, but he doesn't really have a base. I mean, none of them really have bases. So there's no Saudi backing for like a strong Sunni figure in Lebanon anymore. The only person that the Saudis are really backing, and not even to the same extent that they backed someone like Saad Hadidi, is Samir Jaja, who's the head of the Lebanese forces party. But he's, you know, it's not to the same extent. So it's a little bit of support. So for the time being, the Saudi strategy is really just to help strangle Lebanon and let it collapse. That's what Saudi Arabia would like to see. And if Trump had gotten a second term in office, Saudi Arabia probably would have had more support for that strategy, let Lebanon burn. The Americans now, though, under Joe Biden, under the Democratic leadership, you know, they of course are still imperialists, but they do imperialism slightly differently than I guess Republicans do. So their view of the situation is they don't want Lebanon to succeed. They don't want Lebanon to get better, but they don't want Lebanon to collapse completely because they think that that would actually benefit his fellow. So for them, it's let's keep Lebanon on life support. And that's what you're seeing right now. You're seeing Lebanon on life support. Now, should a Republican take power in 2024, which is looking increasingly likely given the unpopularity of Democrats and all the failures of the Biden administration, then you probably will see more of that let it burn and help it burn strategy that the Saudis are pushing for. But that, of course, remains to be seen. The elections are also the first after the historic protests of 2019, where tens of thousands of Lebanese people came to the streets demanding systemic change. The protests forced the then Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign and led to many discussions about the future of the country. Nearly three years down the line, what remains of the demands and agenda of these protesters? Will any of these factor in the elections? The idea of completely changing the system around remains in the realm of ideas of more than anybody really presenting any kind of plan that could actually be implemented in order to change the system around, you know, people, if you ask most people in Lebanon, they want an end to the sectarian based system that that that was imposed on Lebanon long ago. They just there's nobody's really put forth the plan and how to get there. And there's also the fact that regardless of people wanting to change the system, there are a lot of parties that do want to, especially these civil society parties that the West supports. The problem is they're not there's no ideological coherence. There's no and there's no economic ideology to back it up. Like, yes, of course, Lebanon's problems. Many of a lot of Lebanon's problems you could say stem from this sectarian based system that that that supports clientelism and this kind of patronage network and supports people and pushes people to to depend on their communal leaders rather than the state because the state is so weak. So some people will say we need a we need a strong state. But that you know, that doesn't necessarily get to the root of the problem if you're not talking about economics because the biggest problem in Lebanon is not just a weak state. It's a weak corrupt capitalist state, right? So you don't have any parties really putting forth an idea of how we can move forward as a country economically and you know, Lebanon also is not a country based in the global north. It's a country based in the global south, meaning it's a country that's also subject to imperialism subject to all kinds of violations of its sovereignty, whether by Saudi Arabia or Israel or the Americans or the French. So many of the voices that are supported by the West who are all about overthrowing the system that exists in Lebanon as corrupt as it is. They don't present a program for how to change that system while acknowledging the fact that it's constantly being attacked by outside forces. So that's why a lot of the people who do support parties like Hezbollah but also do want a change in the system are very much opposed to these sort of like middle class, liberal, very Western oriented civil society active political parties because they see them as extensions of the imperialism that they feel is the bigger issue in Lebanon. Like before you can start to tackle all of these local issues, they see the issue of imperialism and outside powers violating Lebanon's sovereignty as the primary culprit of Lebanon's greatest issues and that's why they're called the state. They are in the resistance axis and they put that kind of before everything else. So all that's to say no one is presenting a program that can take on both the local economic factors as well as the outside meddling that are the biggest obstacles to Lebanon moving forward. For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.