January 30, 2005
Boston, Massachusetts

As we watch millions of ordinary Iraqis vote freely for the first time in their history, I cannot but contrast the process with that of Lebanese elections. Iraqis in Iraq are voting in their first ever parliamentary elections, and that is an unimaginable achievement that is likely to reverberate in neighboring Syria and elsewhere in the Arab World. But the Lebanese people have always voted (since the 1920s), except for a 20-year interruption caused by the Syrian occupation.

Still, the more striking fact in the Iraqi elections is that they are truly universal, which means that every Iraqi, regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion or place of residence, can vote if he or she so chooses. I emphasize the specific criterion of "place of residence" because the Lebanese have been voting since the 1920s, including women who obtained the right to vote in 1952 (before many European countries granted women that right), except those Lebanese living outside of Lebanon who still cannot vote. Yet, thousands of miles away from Baghdad, Mosul and Basra and all the other Iraqi cities and provinces, millions of Iraqi expatriates living abroad, from Detroit and Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and from Berlin, London and Paris to Amman and Damascus, have voted in these first free elections in Iraq. Even Syrians living abroad can vote in their phony 99.99% elections at their consulates and embassies all over the world to re-elect the despot Bashar Assad and his Baathist ilk. In contrast, Lebanese expatriates still cannot vote.

The reasons have more to do with the deliberate exclusion of the millions in the Lebanese Diaspora from the election process by an authoritarian regime and its Syrian masters. In fact, those millions of Lebanese living outside of Lebanon have been chased out of the country by the very Syrian occupation and its lackeys in the Lebanese regime that are now denying them the right to vote. And for good reason: If people like me were allowed to vote in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit or Houston, the puppet dictators in Beirut would have been booted out of power by the peaceful means of elections decades ago. Unfortunately, it took the cataclysmic event of September 11 to force a major reassessment and reversal in the international outlook on Lebanon's predicament under the Syrian occupation. And now the Syrians and their puppets Lahoud, Karami and Berri are on their way out under intense pressure from a united internal resistance and the international community led by the US and France.

Lebanon is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections this coming May. According to all indicators and sources, those are likely to be the first free elections since 1972 because the world wants the Syrians out before the elections. There can never be free elections in Lebanon with the Syrians still in the picture, and the process of re-democratizing Lebanon cannot move forward.

I, for one, born and bred in Lebanon and currently living in America, have never voted in Lebanese elections, ever! I came of age after the last free elections were held in 1972, then from war to exile, I was never able to vote in any of the elections held after 1972 because they were never free and Lebanese expatriates were always denied the right to vote in them. I have voted as a US citizen many times, but never as a Lebanese citizen.

And so to all those clamoring today to rearrange the political landscape in Lebanon in such a way that the Lebanese people can vote freely for the first time in a long time, I raise the challenge of including the Lebanese exiles, deportees, emigrants and all the expatriates in the elections process. How else can we bring the Lebanese people back together? How else do we encourage the expatriates to reinvest in the rebuilding of the shattered body and soul of Lebanon? How else will the Lebanese people live up to their promise of reaching out to their exiled and emigrant sons and daughters so the bonds to the homeland remain strong? How else to thank those expatriates who worked hard over the years to tell the true story of the Syrian rape of Lebanon to the peoples of Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia and North and South America? How else to thank those expatriates who sustained and supported families and friends with an influx of hard-earned money to keep the internal resistance going even in the darkest hours of Lebanon's nightmare? How else can we hope that at least some of those expatriates will one day decide to come back home again to the country they left behind?

We, the expatriate Lebanese, want to participate in the elections this coming May. We call on the Lebanese government, the Lebanese resistance and opposition parties, the United States, Europe, the United Nations, international elections monitoring organizations, and everyone who is concerned with holding free and fair elections in May in Lebanon to ensure that the new electoral law calls for balloting stations in New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Detroit; Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Edmonton and Vancouver; Paris, Rome, Madrid, London, Berlin, and Cyprus; Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro; Buenos Aires, Mexico, and Santiago; Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi; Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth; and in Johannesburg, Cotonou, Abidjan and Accra.