{"id":976,"date":"2009-06-01T09:51:09","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T13:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=976"},"modified":"2009-06-01T09:51:09","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T13:51:09","slug":"flying-to-beirut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=976","title":{"rendered":"Flying to Beirut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Adams<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am going to be blogging this week from Lebanon, where parliamentary elections take place on Sunday. I will be there as part of an election observation team put together by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, better known as NDI.<\/p>\n

When I was in Lebanon a few weeks ago as part of a preparatory mission, there were rumours circulating that some Lebanese parties were going to fly in expatriates from places like Canada to help enhance their prospects.<\/p>\n

Since I’ve come back, I’ve talked to many Lebanese Canadians about these rumours — everyone from cab-drivers to the (many) Lebanese dads on my son’s soccer team. Everyone had heard the rumours. Some dismissed them as nonsense; many insisted they were true, but were hard-pressed when asked if they knew anyone personally who was getting a free ticket. I have met a couple of people who have told me they re-arranged summer travel plans, already underway, to make sure they made the vote, but they weren’t getting any help from anyone they said.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0the CBC is breaking a story<\/a>\u00a0that suggests that there may be some truth to the rumours.<\/p>\n

This may seem like a preposterously expensive way to win an election, but there are a couple of reasons why it might make sense. First, the races for an estimated 85-90% of the seats in Sunday’s elections are considered to \u00a0have been settled\u00a0already\u00a0through a process of inter-party bargaining which produces agreed-upon “slates” of candidates. Second, there is some ambiguity (I am told) about whether such subsidies would be covered by the new campaign finance laws.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, almost all the remaining 10-15% of seats at issue are in Christian areas. Therefore it might be possible to concentrate the subsidies on people whose votes would likely make a difference. Of course, Canada’s Lebanese population is disproportionately Christian (compared with Lebanon”s).<\/p>\n

Paul Adams teaches journalism at Carleton. He is a former Middle East correspondent for the Globe and Mail, a former director of NDI’s Palestinian program, and a frequent participant in election observation missions in Africa and the Middle East.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Adams I am going to be blogging this week from Lebanon, where parliamentary elections take place on Sunday. I will be there as part of an election observation team put together by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, better known as NDI. When I was in Lebanon a few weeks ago as part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-media-commentary","category-political-stragegy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}