Tag Archives: Vote

Who Won the AUB Elections?

Picture via @WMNader

Back when I was an AUB student, I used to get carried away with the politics of it all. Voting for this party or that will help change things on a bigger scale – I was convinced with that. And I always sought to win, at least during my first two years there. March 14th called themselves Students At Work and they’ve been that way since. March 8th change their name every year. The independents are not really independent and they’ve also become divided. You should also never count out the Jordanians and Palestinians and their sectarian voting.

During my third and last year of undergrad there, I realized that voting for this party over the other – at least in university elections – was ridiculous. My goal as a student was not to take political stances that absolutely no one would care about post the regular 24 hours news cycle. I should be voting for someone who would really try to help me as a student in my university woes. So that last year at AUB, I voted for a mixed list that included a candidate from Amal, a candidate from the LF, a candidate from the PSP and an independent candidate. I had even left an empty spot for lack of “qualified” candidates.

One thing that can be said about my AUB years is that you could always tell who won. As they separated students in front of West Hall with two huge screens and about one hundred security men, you only needed to count the chants, exclude the political ones, to know who won which seat and then follow the winning group to Main Gate and Bliss Street.

But it has stopped being this simple. Every year since, everyone seems to have won AUB. For instance, yesterday’s headlines read:

LF: A tie at AUB with a win in the “fortress” of the FPM.

FPM: A win at AUB. 

And I asked myself the question: who won AUB?

Both sides will extrapolate the AUB elections onto parliamentary elections they both hope they’ll win. The FPM will read into this as them being a majority nationally. The LF will read into this as them being a majority on the Christian field. Both assertions are absolutely unfounded and ridiculous – but they will be made anyway. The students of both sides have already begun celebrating with Facebook statuses and celebratory tweets. We won, we won. All is well. Yay.

With rising tuition fees and a growing disconnect between students and administration, I can say without a doubt that who won AUB yesterday was not the students. Sure, it was a manifestation of free opinion, of democracy, of whatever rhetorical uselessness that gets you to sleep at night. And those students are entitled to their opinion, of course. Let them vote whichever way they want.

The problem is all of these students voting because of their political opinion don’t know exactly exactly how low the attendance in student representative council (SRC) meetings will be once those students they elected start “working” and how little they’ll actually do towards getting them that coveted unlimited printing or whatever promise they gave. And I knew this first hand back in my days: students win and eventually forget they did, until it’s time to mention it on their CVs. Some, from both sides of the political spectrum, rarely skip a meeting. And they try to change things. But they are always faced with an administration that counts on those who absolutely couldn’t care less outside winning and flexing their popularity muscles around.

As AUB students cast their vote against the weapons of Hezbollah or for the weapons of Hezbollah in that university ballot, they were all forgetting one key thing: how will their parents keep paying their rising tuition fees, along with all those university rising costs that are correlated with them? How do they feel about a lack of transparency with their professors and with their administration? How do they feel about AUB remaining the way it is for years and years without change?

Then next year will roll around. And all of these students will still be nagging about the same old things: where’s our unlimited printing? And then they’ll vote the same way again because a vote in AUB is one Hezbollah weapon removed or a firm message for the resistance.

You want to know who won AUB? It’s the status quo that both political camps in the country can erroneously analyze into a vote of trust from the youth that will most definitely be voting for them next year. But hey, it’s not like the “independent” alternative is much better either, with their hypocrisy, their under the table dealings with these political groups they’re challenging and lack of drive to work as well.

I guess we can really say it’s hopeless. The point is: voting for a political party is not a wrong thing to do… if you’re doing so for university reasons, not because some cosmic entity out there is out to get you. It is that courage of voting for someone who differs from you politically, simply because they are better qualified, that everyone seems to lack – and it’s easiest to vote as such in university elections, where your vote really doesn’t matter.

Why N7W is NOT a Scam

Despite many attempts to get my lovely Lebanese compatriotes off their high horse regarding many aspects of our beloved country, it seems I have fallen short somehow. The high-horse is too high for some people to actually see that not everything is out there to get them and not everything “good” that goes on with their country needs to be torn apart.

Let me start with one simple thing. Even IF N7W was a scam, it still doesn’t discredit the immense positive attributes this will bring Lebanon as a whole if Jeita ends up winning. Sure, it won’t end our national debt as some people suggested, nor will it be a solution to our political system. But come on, anyone comparing Jeita winning with a solution to the national debt is not only delusional, they also have some logical fuse in their brain short-circuiting. No offense that is.

The N7W campaign, which has been going on for almost four years now, will have millions upon millions of votes cast – and that was before SMS votes started. That was when people voted with emails and only those very enthusiastic voted with more than one email.

But I digress.

Recently, I’ve had the “pleasure” of reading an “interesting” post by my friend Gino Raidy who immediately stamped the word SCAM all over the N7W process, as well as a picture to go with it.

When I first clicked on the link to read Gino’s post, which was immediately picked up by BeirutSpring, I expected to read something interesting. I expected to find something new. Not something rehashed, over and over again, by the same people.

I shall be addressing every point Gino made in his article, with lesser emphasis on increasing font size and such.

Multiple Voting:

First, multiple votes is not a reason for the N7W competition to be a scam. Far from it, actually. Most competitions involving email voting let people vote once per email. And when it comes to SMS voting, you can vote more than once. You are allowed to vote for your favorites to win as many times as you want. Let’s look at two trivial examples. American Idol. You can vote either by telephone as much as you want, or you can text the number of your desired candidate as much as you want. The final tally of votes ends up nearing 500 million. I don’t see anyone screaming scam about that. Or is it only a scam when the theme of the vote is different?

A second example of competitions with voting are award shows such as the ACM, or Academy of Country Music Awards. If you thought American Idol was a “silly” example, at least the most prestigious country music award show is not. And for that awards show, the public gets to vote for the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a country artist. Yes, you guessed it. They can vote as many times as they want.

Voting Since 2009 2007:

We’ve been voting since 2007, not 2009. But we’ve been voting for different phases of the competition since 2007. Four years ago, the Cedar Forest in North Lebanon was nominated with Jeita. And we were voting for both sites. Then came a time where the nominated sites had to be cut down to about seventy and each country can only have one representative. So the Lebanese committee chose to have Jeita represent us onwards and pulled the plug on support for the Cedars. You might disagree with the decision. Some people argued that the Cedars are more symbolic of Lebanon. But in all fairness, Jeita has a much higher chance of winning. The second phase of the vote was to get all the sites that qualified into groups based on the nature of that site. Jeita was in the group of natural caves. And so, yet again, we voted for Jeita in its group and got it to qualify to the final stage of voting that is taking place today.

Phase voting is a natural thing in all competitions. It’s also a very natural thing in elections. I would give the American Idol example or any award show example again but let me illustrate this with something else. US presidential elections. It starts with democratic and republican primaries taking place for over a year all across the United States. Each party ends up voting for a nominee that represents it in the general elections. Then, those two candidates go head to head and one winner emerges. Another example is the French presidential elections. Each party goes through a series of voting to choose their nominee. Then all appointed nominees go through a first round of voting, by all the people of France, which ends up narrowing down the choice to only two candidates before the president is ultimately chosen in a final round of voting.

How is sequential voting since 2007 a mark of scam, I have no idea. You can check out the steps of the vote here.

UNESCO Does Not Support It

Fine, UNESCO does not support it. I fail to see how the N7W committee asking UNESCO to back it up and them refusing reflects negatively on N7W. After all, aren’t there many things that UNESCO did not support? Wasn’t it up until very recently (Monday to be exact) that Palestine was granted full membership to UNESCO?

Besides, UNESCO already has a list of World Heritage Sites, including the Lebanese Kadisha Valley, which is threatened to be removed off the list. Now I wonder, what good did the tag of “world heritage site” do the Kadisha Valley? How known is the valley even among Lebanese? I can’t begin to tell you the number of people I know who hadn’t heard of the valley until I mentioned it.

UNESCO might not support N7W but that doesn’t reflect negatively on the competition in any way whatsoever. It just means that. A committee where political play is key decided not to back up a committee where political play is to a lesser key. Simple as that.

The Maldives Withdrew Themselves From The Competition:

Yes, I have read that same article, back from May 2011, that the Maldives decided to withdraw themselves from the vote because the N7W organization asked for copious amount of money and financial engagements. Simple question, which I will illustrate with a breathtaking image of the Maldives:

Surprise, surprise… The Maldives are still in the competition. Their government pulled off support for the participation? It’s hard for me to believe that a flimsy Switzerland-based organization can overtake a government. I’m just saying.

Besides, to be eligible to be part of the final 28 participants, no fee had to be paid. N7W is, at the end of the day, a non-profit organization. But to be non-profit, you need to balance out your expenses. In order to do so, they offered sponsorship rights, which are elective, for the final phase of the vote, in return for a certain amount of money. In Lebanon’s case, according to officials from the Jeita Grotto committee from whom I got a statement, no such fees were paid. Jeita doesn’t have sponsors.

But let me ask this: is $500,000 too much to be paid for the amount of advertisement they’re getting from being part of this competition? Could Jeita have gotten the exposure it’s getting had it not been competing? I hardly think so. Odds are Jeita would have forever remained a landmark visited mostly by the Lebanese and a fraction of the couple million tourists we get every year.

More Tourists:

Yes, more tourists. There’s no way in hell having millions of millions of people (multiple voting included) visiting a website and voting for seven different sites without it sparking at least a curiosity to visit, with many of those acting out of it and actually visiting. Take me for an example, I really want to visit the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, a landmark I did not know existed before the competition. Say I do go to Ireland. I won’t end up visiting the Cliffs of Moher and going back to Lebanon. I’ll stay there for at least a week, visiting other landmarks and helping out their local economy.

To assume that “NO ONE” is falling for this is absurd. Tourists who are interested in visiting a country will search for related info about their country. If Jeita ends up winning, odds are that will be one of the main points they will encounter in their search and they will most definitely want to visit it if they end up coming to Lebanon. At the end of the day, Lebanon is a country driven first and foremost by its tourism sector, which is helped immensely by such exposure. To assume that such exposure is nonsensical would be nonsensical in itself.

National Pride:

Yes, national pride. Shouting national pride from the rooftops that is. And yes, that does make me – or any other Lebanese – proud of what we have accomplished with the Jeita vote, how for one rare time in our history we’ve forgotten our differences – at least for a minute – and all voted for one common thing. Yes, that is something that makes me proud. It makes me proud to see a landmark from my country be part of a competition on such an international level, just as I would be proud to see, for example, Riyad Salameh picking up an award for excellent skills in managing our Central Bank and helped us weather the international financial meltdown. It makes me proud to see some great Lebanese icon, like Fairuz, being honored at an international level – regardless of whether I think she needs that honor or not. Sure, we need to preserve our natural sites. We need better laws. We need to take better care of our country. But I fail to see how all of that is logically deterring us from supporting the Jeita vote in any way?

At the end of the day, scam or not, official or not, N7W is doing most of the countries that have reached the finals a huge favor. When I look at their live voting map and I see someone from Vietnam or Chinese Taipei voting for Jeita, it makes me happy. Not because they voted for Jeita, but because someone, somewhere, now knows that there’s a country called Lebanon in the Middle East with a breathtaking landmark that, win or no win, is now known.

It’s clear though that some Lebanese need to stop it with the conspiracy theories and relax. If you don’t find enough reasons to vote for Jeita, then don’t vote. Don’t berate those who find the reasons to. And also, fellow Lebanese, you shouldn’t be angry people are urging everyone to vote. It will all end in nine days.

Lebanese Beer Almaza’s Ad to Support the Jeita Vote

They always make awesome ads, don’t you think?

In the meantime, vote people, vote!

13 Reasons to Vote for Jeita Grotto

You know what?

Lebanese suck.

We really do. We need to bash EVERYTHING. There’s NOTHING that can take place in the country that is not frowned upon or looked down upon or criticized.

The latest? People are criticizing the whole “Vote for Jeita” campaign, with about 3 weeks left on the vote. They can’t even accept that the competition is NOT scam.

“Jeita doesn’t deserve to be a wonder,” is one of the things I’ve heard. “Why charge for the SMS to vote?” is another. “If the government wants Jeita to win, why don’t they vote?”

All of us need to want Jeita to win. Not the government. Not anyone else. We, as a people, should be proud that our country has something that has gained enough international recognition from international panels that judged Jeita as being worthy of being one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature.

Regarding the SMS vote: The New 7 Wonders committee DOES NOT accept free SMS votes.  The 10 cents charge we pay is one enforced by the New 7 Wonders committee. The government is not charging anything. I’ve voted 35 times so far and it barely caused a dent in my prepaid credit. And you know what, even if it did – I don’t care.

I recently stumbled on this blog post where they make out the vote for Jeita as some form of “national chauvinism,” saying that we need to study the other 27 finalists in order to make an informative vote. On that same post, a comment by “Noel” states that our “need” to have Jeita win is because we, as Lebanese, need “validation from some outside authority.”

Sure, our country is messed up in many ways. But I believe we have a lot to be grateful for. However, can we  – FOR ONCE – stop being so pessimistic about everything that has to do with Lebanon? Can we just chill for a bit, sit back, relax and not overanalyze everything? Can we seriously cut it with the know-it-all attitudes and for once feel good that Lebanon is actually getting a reputation for itself apart from the whole war-torn country now sex-capital of the Middle East?

But here are 13 reasons why we all need to vote for this wonder:

1) Jeita is spectacular

2) Jeita is wonderful

3) Jeita is grandiose

4) Jeita is brilliant

5) Jeita is gorgeous

6) Jeita is poetic

7) Jeita is angelic

8) Jeita is radiant

9) Jeita is exquisite

10) Jeita is majestic

11) Jeita is sublime

12) Jeita is elegant

13) Jeita makes me proud to be Lebanese. And so should you!

Also quick info for you out there:

Jeita is the only limestone cave among the 28 nominees. Most of Jeita cannot be accessed by visitors. For instance, the lower cave is over 6000 meters long, only 500 of which are accessible to visitors via boats. Moreover, the upper cave is over 2000 meters in length, only 750 of which are accessible to the public. Jeita also has the world’s longest stalactite at 8.2m high.

And for those of want to vote, you can go to this link or check out this picture:

And for those outside Lebanon, you can vote via the website: http://www.new7wonders.com or text Jeita to your country’s corresponding number:

Also check out this ad featuring opposing Lebanese politicians, beauty queens and actors to promote the vote:

Back in 2008, the US was invited to Barrack the vote. This is our time to rock the vote, Lebanese-style.

Come on Lebanon: Vote For Jeita Grotto for the New 7 Wonders of Nature

The final stretch of the vote is here: we have one month left.

I know we’ve all gotten tired of it but we can’t let down now. We’re almost there.

And I have good news for you.

We can now vote via text – no more those long registration steps and choosing six other wonders we don’t really care about.  And no, it’s not even an expensive text. Shocker, I know. We must really want to win for not using this to make money. It’s simply 10 cents per vote.

What to do?

Send the word “Jeita” to 1070. You’ll receive a reply acknowledging your vote.

So vote. And vote frequently.

And for those who are always short on credit, you can always use your many emails to make accounts on: http://www.new7wonders.com