Aoun’s FPM: Like Nation, Like Party

Yet again, a party/movement once touted as the party of change and difference has caught all the diseases of the Lebanese nation.

Now Lebanon has a good long piece on internal tensions inside Michel Aoun's FPM (Free Patriotic Movement). You say “goodie, good, good”, someone must be coming to his senses over at FPM. Unfortunately, upon reading the whole thing we find that the problems are:

-Fights for power, where Michel Aoun wants his son-in-law in charge (Gibran Bassil).

-Fights over who controls party money, apparently a lot of it.

-Postponement of internal party elections from May to October of this year.

Gee! Personal fights, nepotism, money business and inability to hold elections. Where have we seen this before?

I’m sure some larger policy disagreements loom inside the party, but they are apparently less prominent than the petty stuff.

I am also not so naive as to believe that this stuff is not part of politics everywhere. But really, nothing, zippo, about policy issues?

Yallah, the state can’t hold elections. The political parties can’t hold elections. At least the engineers elected someone somewhere last week, and there was politics involved. For what? I don’t know.


Oh well, Lebanon: same old, same old. Plus ca change...