Why is the Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri the enemy of the uprising? (3) Will Amal Movement take the initiative?

Written by Nasser Kandil,

It would be easy to identify the role which Amal Movement has played on one hand, and the role which was played by the closer and the far allies on other hand in creating the suitable opportunities to make the project which aims to undermine the stability and which tampers into the presidential merit a goal of it, it is to affect the symbolism of the Speaker of the parliament Nabih Berri, to undermine his prestige, and to put him with his supporters under pressures which contribute in creating the suitable environment for the decisive moments in the conflict about the future of the final step in forming the presidential issue. Amal Movement which represents a wide expansion in the South of Lebanon, its Bekaa, its capital and its suburbs of low to middle- income and which Al-Imam Al Sayyed Mousa Al-sadr has launched as a resistance movement has played a constitutional active role in resisting the occupation, it has not lost its wide representational importance among the popular classes which constitute the most suffering classes regarding the distribution  of the outcome of the wealth of the sectarian regime. Moreover the gains of these classes are not made out of this movement an organization of the regime or a protector of it, its normal place which stems from its Charter and the interests of its components is still close to change and the turning of Lebanon into a citizenship and non-sectarian country. But this movement which its head becomes a speaker of the House of Representatives and which permits the horizons of climbing the social ladder has lost many of the resources of its necessary momentum to play a role which chimes with its normal position in composition and in its charter.

At a time when the popular parties are directed by the public speech of its leaders, the speech of the head of the movement is overshadowed by the presence of his position as a general manager of the Lebanese political regime and a sponsor of its balances, stability, and protecting its position as a surrounding of the resistance and the supporter of Syria’s security and its position in the conflict with Israel in a country that its regime is providing opportunities according to the sectarian loyalties where Amal Movement is coming first in its sect, where the most of its cadres who occupied roles are in the governmental administrations where there are personal prospects for a lifestyle and a change in the social environment and the ability to communicate with the worries and the concerns of the street to which the movement belongs and empowered by it, in return this has caused the dulness of the struggled communication for leading the concerns of the social change, so the movement has become a center for attracting the regional and the social services complaints but it is far from the issues which express the requirements of the social struggle of the classes and the active segments which their struggle is related to criticizing the economic regime and its reforming.

The atrophy of the union job and the decline of its position among the students and the labors were some of the results of the post –Taif compared with the sixties and seventies of the last century, where the Speaker of the parliament Berri was one of the most prominent symbols of the Student movement in early sixties, and this atrophy was one of the reasons of the vacancy which has paved the way for leading the movement by associations and figures from the unknown, and outside of the rules of the democracy which characterizes the union job, Amal Movement the most prominent and the strongest force among the national forces in the structure of the country after Al Taif cannot disassociate of its responsibility about this atrophy and decline.

During the tests which determine the position which the forces are choosing for themselves according to the network of interests them represent, Amal Movement and at its forefront its Head have proven their original belonging as representative of the popular classes, however the most prominent test is the battle which has not finished till now about the responsibility of the Lebanese banks on performing their tax responsibilities away from their profits. It is known for the professors of the political economy and the experts of sociology that the main outcome of the wealth in Lebanon is recycled through the bank system which constitutes the refinery of the net gains for the class which has the necessary immunity away from claiming and accounting. It is clear that the battle which is fought by the Speaker Berri with the banks and which has harsh public confrontations have expressed a firm belonging to the concept of the country on one hand, and adhering the social criteria of the economic and social stability on which Amal Movement has founded on the other hand.

The joining of Amal Movement in the system of Participation has not formed an objective satisfactory factor for the aspirations of whom it represents, or the source of disrupting its rank in the pursuit for the country of citizenship and institutions, therefore every theoretical speech about exhausting the sectarian regime of its default age, and its turning into a burden on communities, or the failure of Al-Taif system in providing the transition into a modern country is still inadequate unless it depends on the fact that the common equation between Al-Taif and Taifiya   (sectarianism) is beyond the similarity of letters, it depends on making the owner of the interests pay for the regime on the basis of the presence of a sect that fights to protect him since he is its regime, this was the situation before Al-Taif  as a trick which inspired the Christians that they are the owners of the regime, where Al-Taif due to the Sunni Shiite sharing is trying to find an alternative center for it. The sectarian balance which based on the contest between the vigilance of all the communities at the time of participation has formed a public feeling of injustice and dissatisfaction instead of the success in generating a security system for the regime from a satisfactory position. In addition to the achievement of the negative balance of the communities in disabling the regime, a negative balance has been achieved in the sectarian dissatisfaction that expresses a Christian feeling of presidential and parliamentary dissatisfaction, and the feeling of Sunnah in confining the Prime Minister, while the Shiite are feeling with the margin of their role compared with the magnitude of their regional influence and their numbers, which  means making Lebanon under a civil war, so the satisfaction which is not achieved by any of the communities, will not be achieved whatever some have tried the search for  how to prolong the age of the sectarian regime, because the balance and the vigilance are present, so this moral and material satisfaction is a condition of the survival of the sectarian regime. The bet was on turning Amal Movement to an alternative force of the Phalange Party in the seventies as a bodyguard for the sectarian regime, but this does not happen. First, because the social composition was clear in structure and premises as the battle with the banks has shown, second, because there is a national and a social interaction and its relation with the resistance issue on other hand, third, because this replacement cannot be achieved by overcoming the others and the monopolization of the regime’s outcomes but through having a share of them in a dire economy and dry-sources regime, furthermore, the result of the numerical multitude of the sectarian component has led to the lack of concern in adopting criteria outside the sectarian division politically, administratively, and socially.

Amal Movement which is surrounded by allies which each one of them is living a dilemma that is similar to its, is asked today to restore the missed historical role of the Deprived Movement , when Amal Movement was the resisting military formation which Al-Imam Al-Sadr has wanted and where the religious ideology was a part of the sources of its power, while the Deprived Movement was a faithful civil non-sectarian or religious movement, in other words its  referentiality is not restricted to a religion or an ideology of a spiritual concept, it was a political movement through which Al-Imam Al-Sadr has approximated the national, political, reform, and the social issues of Lebanon, where among its founders it included one hundred and ninety men and figures of Lebanon from different communities, so it is no longer allowable for Amal Movement to ignore the pursuit to restore its form, content and identity.

Amal Movement is aware that their allies which Hezbollah is its prominent one are suffering from crises as it does, the party which is leading the resistance and forming the additive value in the war against terrorism and the striking regional power is unable to combine between its responsibilities of providing the necessary security network for the resistance and between keeping its pure image as a power that does not have a coverage for the corruption and the policies which are responsible for impoverishing the incubator environment. Therefore the followers of Hezbollah and some of  its cadres are explaining this  impasse by making the partner Amal Movement bearing this responsibility and the Free Patriotic Movement which is the ally of the ally and the steady ally in its choices towards the resistance and Syria concerning the regional issue, but it is internally checkered between its identity of change and its sectarian partisanship which is empowered by it even if it hits its allies with fragments, and at their forefront the Speaker of the Parliament Berri, while the allies which are farer from the secular forces are feeling with marginalization and that they are a reserve force for the calamities not partners, where there is a serious research in the options .This is how the nationalists relatively live but the communists are living it more.

Amal Movement is required from its position in Lebanon the home and the country and from the position of its Head in the complicated formation of making politics and its controlling over most of its parties to take the necessary initiative to restore the vitality of immunity against the projects of targeting, but it led to restoring the vitality of people in order to present their concerns and issues even through the left vacancy. What is needed is a serious initiative not in media that starts from calling the important and the major parties which are allied and close to have consultation and dialogue that is parallel to the parliamentary dialogue under the presidency of the Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri but this time as a Head of Amal Movement, through which the roles and the responsibilities are discussed and distributed between the activists in the dialogue and the movement together, and where the visions are drawn, the level of tension and ambiguities is lowered, and where the weak points are removed between who is supposed that they are allies in the resistance choice, the civil country, and the election law on the relative basis, and the economic system which is based on encouraging the production sectors and which stems from the concept of the welfare state, these are the four-pillars which summarize any changing vision for the future of Lebanon.