Despite improvement, DLM still has a long way

OSLO - Dalia Ateek

January/February 2006

The treatise by Tarek Fawwaz on the Democratic Left Movement (DLM) in the last issue of Alternative was intriguing. It was a source of both hope and despair at the same time.

Hope comes from the fact that Tarek was allowed to criticize his party, publicly and to the fullest extent possible, without being accused of turning coat.

Despair, on the other hand, springs out from the state of chaos and disorganization that this movement, loaded with the cream of the Lebanese youth crop, has not been able so far to organize itself into anything that looks like an organization.

After Tarek’s article a number of things changed. Telling by the stories of the comrades at the DLM, the movement is due to witness a number of major events. First, the final draft of the bylaws should be ready and circulated to the members by the end of January. Second, list of members as well as collection of subscriptions will be also finalized by mid-February. Finally, the movement’s long-awaited first general assembly will be held on March 12.

All of these events look like good news. Yet there are no guarantees, whatsoever, that the current leadership would go by these deadlines. According to some DLM members, the picture does not look good so far and there is no indication that the movement is currently building its membership.

Why is so? No one has the answer, not even the leadership. The movement’s leadership, for its part, has been busy and totally focused on politics. Some might argue that a number of the DLM’s leaders are already on the Syrian regime’s death list, but that should never be enough reason to deter the movement’s activity and organization.

Another drawback for the movement is its inability to put together a modern and decent platform. Most of what the movement calls “political papers” look like an extended journalistic analysis of the ongoing political situation and in most cases, these papers became irrelevant once the issues it deals with are out of the news.

The DLM still has a long way to tell the people what it wants. Why is the movement leftist? What kind of left? Is it communist? Social Democrat? Or is it a mix of more than one leftist school? If the DLM is a mix, then its intellectuals should put a serious effort to synthesize a platform with medium-term and short-term goals. Such platform is certainly expected to carry leftist thought, but the movement should make sure that its leftist jargon not be as unrealistic as that of most other leftist parties in the region. Leftism should be adapted to the Lebanese situation, and that is the primary job of DLM.

The DLM should not be talking about long-gone socialist systems. Its platform should not be an extended political opinion editorial. The DLM should offer leftist thought adapted to Lebanon, or in other words, should tell the Lebanese why such thought still makes sense today in their bid to reform their country and build their democracy.

Dalia Ateeq is member of the Norway-based Movement for World Social Justice. She wrote this analysis for Alternative