2023. ♪ host: this is al jazeera, theories of the top stories. the u.s. as it is confident finland and sweden will be accepted into nato. turkey's objected to their joining using the countries harboring -- accusing the countries of harboring terrorists. russian's defense ministry is released footage of hundreds of ukrainian fighters surrendering at eight mariupol'steel plant. at the troops have been taken to up former prison complex in eight russian-controlled territory.

palestinians mourn at the funeral of shareen abu auckland habeen arrested. he was attacked as he carried the coffin in jerusalem leslie. federal health officials are warning covid-19 cases are on the rise and they could get worse over the coming months. about one third of the u.s. population lives in areas considered at higher risk. people are being urged to wear masks indoors. those of the headlines. the news continues on al jazeera after inside story. ♪ [siren sounds] >> [speaking non-english language]

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host: is political change coming to lebanon? independent and performance candidates made gains in parliamentary elections while some additional candidates lose grounds. will newcomers have the answers to pull the country out of a deep economic crisis? this is inside story. ♪ welcome to the program. i am kim burnell. lebanon has been called a failing state. its currency is nearly worthless, food, medicine, and fuel are in short supply. people are unable to rely on

basic services like electricity and rubbish collection. many blame lebanon's politicians were years of corruption and mismanagement. a parliamentary election on sunday was their chance to vote for change. independent candidates emerged from protests won seats. the iranian backed hezbollah lost their parliamentary majority and some traditional parties performed poorly. new mps face major challenges ahead. >> many of the old faces are back, but a meaningful number of new ones made it into lebanon's parliament. the iranian backed hezbollah party lost their majority, but no other political group can claim victory. the opposition may be sizable but not united. what is a first in a post-civil war politics are the reformists

who won 10% of the seats, candidates not affiliated to the mainly sectarian parties. >> we have to be [indiscernible] because we do not have to be in the polarization. >> those new voices will stand in the middle of longtime enemies. tensions have spilled onto the streets. supporters of rival parties fought on election day. local observers documented attacks on their teams by supporters from shia groups, as for -- hezbollah. >> [indiscernible] >> the groups may have preserve seats allocated to their sects

but observers claimed they can no longer claim sole web presentation. >> voters and their representatives and constituencies. at the same time there is an alternative goal that went outside the box. that happened for the first time . >> there is no doubt change has begun, but the old divide, as paula -- hezbollah and its allies when it interested forces on the other as not going away. they need to agree on a new government and elect a new president in a few months. political deadlock is not unusual in this fractured country but there is an urgent need to adopt forms -- reforms and laws to rescue a collapsed economy and a polarized parliament will not make that easy. the divide dates back to the civil war, after which our it divided between sex.

the parliamentary democracy is a reality a consensual democracy. unanimity is needed to maintain peace. host: as she mentioned power was divided between the sex after the end of the war in 1990. that system aims to guarantee political representation for all of lebanon's 18 sex. parliament seats are split between christians and muslims and allocated to different denominations within each religion. the president must always be a christian, the prime minister a sunni muslim and the speaker of parliament a shia muslim. let's bring in all of our guests all joining us from beirut. we have a political activist and lawyer running for a parliamentary seat, a political commentator and writer and cofounder and ceo of an

independent digital media platform. a warm welcome to the program. i would like to start with you, you ran for parliament. you did not win a seat. what is your take on the results? how much of a shift is this for lebanese politics? >> hello, and thank you for having me today. i think what happens in this elections was historic. for the first time where able to break the role of traditional winning parties and to bring the -- two parliament. parliament is really from the people to the people. it is not negligible what has happened. host: i would like to cross to

you. the hezbollah bloc lost its majority but they still retain the same number of seats. what does that say to you? >> i would very much agree with this. you heard from candidates who lost in those elections. what is historic, and indeed what has happened was in every way a big win for the lebanese position, the people who have been demonstrating for the last two or three years, and we have seen it across the country. two seats in south lebanon being lost from as well -- hezbollah.

[indiscernible] and again across the country from the south to the north. in terms of losing the majority that would allow imposing politics inside parliament this has been lost to mathematics. [indiscernible] this is also change, because in numbers and representation, so across the board we can easily say this was the best case scenario for the lebanese

outside of the political establishment in lebanon. it is a historic achievement. host: you mentioned the free patriotic movement, the biggest christian wal -- bloc is no longer. i would like to pass over due, is this indicative of a major shift? is hezbollah losing support? >> absolutely not. i do not agree, it went pretty much as expected. there was an expected loss that was going to come to the ruling majority in favor of emerging forces. the thing is we still do not know where the division lies right now and who may have a

majority. i think we have a centrist bloc between the former leading majority and the former part of government, the unity government that decided to play the role of opposition, and right now we might see a different electoral map altogether. it is not two solid blocs but two blcos and a swing bloc composed of all veteran politicians like the former speaker of the house and the leader of the progressive socialist movement known to play swing roles and is to of lebanon, and now they can actually have a bigger say because they can play in the middle and swing one way or the

other depending upon the issue. this is what they're looking at right now rather than a complete shift in political power. it is a shift in the makeup of coalitions that will be in parliament. host: i would like to toss it back to you, verena. one of the biggest things to come from these elections, the so-called reformists looking to shake things up. and they make big changes given the rigidity of the entire system? >> i think since there are more than 10 mps, they are able to percent in appeal -- an appeal. however, i think what is good about the mps that are now in parliament is that they are from

grassroots, the movement of the streets, from the heart of the october uprising. there will still be pressure on the streets. this means that we will all still support them and try to help. we will put more pressure whether on the streets, syndicates, universities. if we see it from a holistic approach there is a lot to be done. host: alia, can independents work together as a bloc? >> this is a very important point. i think what we are about to see , and this is of course taking into consideration that no violence is used by the government or has small --

hezbollah. dynamics are going to change. what we have seen over the last more than 15 years was polarization within parliament. i was mentioning this idea. what is important to the average lebanese person right now is that the lebanese care policy about the economy, jobs, an inco me. 80% of the poverty -- population is under the poverty line. look at the bloc of 17 people. the fact that there sects are not important.

what is important is that they came from october 19 and they were not allowed to work inside that armament. -- parliament. he has a bullet inside his heart while trying to protest next to parliament and now he is in parliament. [indiscernible] among those people there are some who come with extremely sophisticated backgrounds in environmental issues, economic issues and their input will not be small. i do not think it is important that they are represented as a bloc. host: i just want to -- i hear you. i want to push into something

that you raised. 80% of the population according to the u.n. lives in some form of property, things like access to sanitation, health, school attendance as well as things like income. if the population is obviously struggling so much why were there not more people voting for reformists? why were there not more people voting for independents? >> because this was a sanctioned elected as well. what we have seen is a decrease in overall turnout, but it was an increase in some people who never voted before and voted for change. the turnout was a vote of

no-confidence. this is a vote of no-confidence in the political establishment. the newcomers are going to be tested. they did not have access to the media, they are not very well known. there was so much done to demotivate people when they are not going to vote against the establishment across the country. not to boycott the elections. there was a lot that contributed. we have to take into consideration [indiscernible]

that made a difference in the final results. host: jamal, i would like to cross her video. what message if any do you think the voting and of this number of reformists candidates, what message do you think that sense of the political establishment? >> we must be looking at different numbers. if you look at the numbers in light of what was happening in lebanon, we see that there is a strong, affirming vote for some of the powers like hezbollah, who got more votes than last time. fbm, it was predicted it would be the demise of them. a new bloc came and inherited the bloc that it and boycotted the election. we are talking about a movement

led by the future prime minister. these people you are calling reformists claim to be reformists of. you were talking about poverty and economic issues. we have yet to hear economic proposals. some of these people carry the voice of the imf and the bankers and they are pushing for the privatization of state assets in order to cover the losses of the ponzi scheme of the bankers. this is a dangerous thing people must be aware of, because you have the illusion of new faces but it will be the same policies that led them to this economic collapse. i am not talking everybody, alia

mentioned people did not get attention in the media. one of the candidates that won big was host of a primetime tv show to create an alternative, i do not know what more attention you can get. a lot of the candidates that run in his circle are pro-imf policies, probe privatization and they are not any different in their policies than what got lebanon to these policies. host: it does not sound like you have any hope. whoever is prime minister will have to work with the international monetary fund to get lebanon out of this crisis. do you have any hope for the future if what has gotten the country to this point, it sounds like you do not expect anything to change? >> raising the hopes is

dangerous, because the problem in lebanon is not technical, it is not a matter of minor legislation or policy, it is structural. this country has been in trouble or on weak ground since its inception 100 years ago. we have always had collapses, wars, and it always seems to spiral down into this area because there is a structural issue. you cannot have this country built on this confessional system. there e is underrepresentation f people from certain areas and certain religions compared to others, and this has to do with their social class, whether they are all the money were old establishment or not. this is structural. this cannot be resolved by legislation. lebanon needs a new constitution

, a new social contract in order for it to solve its problems. host: i can see, alia, do you want to jump in. >> portraying the newcomers, i agree there are newcomers and you need time to test them. they need to get the time to be tested. the dollar has jumped already. they have not even walked inside parliament and people are asking for change that is going to happen. to say that they present the bankers, let's look at candidates running on the list of establishment. [indiscernible] he is a bank owner who was played a role in transferring money outside of lebanon. it was on the list of hezbollah.

it does not get more banker oriented than that, and he lost to someone who does not come from a rich family, who does not come from the imf circus. there was of this conversation that needs to be had about how to save the economic situation in lebanon. not forestalling government assets or doing anything with them unless we have a functional this is a system that is already taken us into bankruptcy. we will lose whatever is left. to say the newcomers are the ones flirting with the imf is simply not correct. host: we are coming almost to the end of the program. if we look, there has to be a

new speaker elected. the president calls for binding consultations to choose the prime minister or form of government. how do you foresee this process? >> i think the challenge here is i think for the first time the ruling class, clinical parties do not have the monopoly of representation. something has changed, a fundamental change. i think we need a fundamental schematic change, but i think sometimes this kind of change can be made through legislation, and if we continue to lobby from the inside to the outside, to put pressure everywhere, i think

we can meet the change that we want. as for the next roadmap, i think it is important, what is mostly important is the economic crisis and the way out, and what is most important is not to sell the state's resources. that is the most important thing. host: thank you very much for your time. thank you to all of our guests, and thank you for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera.com, and for further discussion go to our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter. for me and the whole team, i am

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man: i've already had a rewarding career representing artists writing the first review of basquiat, being the first person to buy his work, being jeff koons' dealer during the nineties. i've already done very rewarding things like this. i'm a stealth bomber. i can walk the walk and talk the talk of money people but i'm using the structure to put out some very progressive, radical ideas. first the challenge was economic survival.