AUB elections pass mostly peacefully with leftist alliance topping polls
AMAL sees surprising upswing in popularity
People's Movement was involved in short-lived clashes with SSNP

 

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Daily Star staff
DS 20/11/03

Leftist groups on Wednesday won the majority of seats  in the first round of student elections at the American University of Beirut, which unexpectedly saw minor violent incidents.
Some 60 percent of AUB's 7,000 students headed to the polls to elect 93 out of 205 candidates to the Student Representative Committees (SRC) of the university's six faculties.
The SRC elections are the first round of elections. Each SRC committee later elects delegates to the higher University Student Faculty Committee (USFC) whose membership is comprised of 17 students and seven teachers and headed by AUB president John Waterbury.
The alliance of leftist independents No Frontiers group  and former Beirut MP Najah Wakim's People's Movement  swept almost all 36 seats of the SRC of AUB's largest school, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
But the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and its ally, the Amal Movement, along with candidates from the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) surprised the two leftists groups as they took most of the sophomore class's eight seats. The upper hand in the FAS, however, remained with leftists who won the classes of graduates, seniors and juniors.
Amal saw for the first time a surge in its popularity in FAS, where they won more than one seat. Freshman seats in AUB's largest faculty were distributed between Jordanian, Palestinian and SSNP candidates.
Supporters of both leftist groups, who together outnumbered supporters of all other groupings, were actively rallying students and inviting them to elect their candidates. The People's Movement, however, was involved in a short-lived clash with the SSNP, which was allied with the Amal Movement and Hizbullah.
"Some parties bring to AUB their violent practices from off campus," said Mansour Omeira from No Frontiers, who won his bid to an SRC FAS graduate class seat. "Violence was not restricted to physical clashes. It rather reflected the country's culture of exchanging accusations of treason and threats."
Despite the administration's efforts to calm students down,  the past week witnessed a tense run-up to elections and clashes were inevitable. "They exchanged offensive circulars and counter-circulars, but everything is over now," dean of students affairs Maroun Kisrwani told The Daily Star. He said the administration strove to keep an atmosphere of harmony among candidates and their political group sponsors.
In the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, supporters of former Army Commander General Michel Aoun's FPM lost ground in what is traditionally described as the "Aounist castle" in AUB.
"Lists of independents were running against our candidates. Independents enjoy the support of parties from across the political spectrum," said Jad Asmar, the head of the FPM group, who won a senior class seat in the Suleiman Olayan School of Business.
According to Asmar, he "faced a bitter confrontation" in the School of Business.
"We tried to convince supporters of the People's Movement to join us and knock out SSNP candidates, but they preferred to run alone with their allies, No Frontiers," he said.
The end result, however, was a division of seats among the SSNP and Aounists in the School of Business, where some students saw an under-the-table exchange of votes between the two rival groups.
Seats in the business school's SRC were distributed between several parties including candidates of Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Youth Organization. The PYO, who lost ground in the Lebanese American University last week, came back victoriously at AUB winning seats in most faculties. The PYO victory is expected to be reflected in its ability to push its SRC candidates to the USFC.
The PYO victory also appeared in small faculties where the control of political parties seemed minimal. The Faculty of Health Sciences was among the PYO's spoils; it also witnessed a comeback for supporters of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's Future Youth Organization, which had seen setbacks in the past few years.
In the Faculty of Medicine and the School of Nursing, party supporters who made it to the SRC were a minority. Among these were SSNP's militant supporter, Shadi Yaghi. According to students in this faculty, the basis for elections here was divided on sectarian lines. "Muslims voted for Muslims and Christians voted for Christians," said a medical school student who preferred to remain anonymous.

Back