Progressive Socialist Party

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Parti socialiste progressiste
Progressive Socialist Party
Party flag of the Parti socialiste progressiste
Party leader Walid Jumblat
founding 1949 by Kamal Dschumblat
Headquarters Mokhtara , Mount Lebanon
Alignment secular
democratic socialism
social democracy
progressivism
Parliament seats 7 of 128 ( National Assembly )
Website www.psp.org.lb

The Progressive Socialist Party or Socialist Progressive Party ( Arabic الحزب التقدمي الاشتراكي, DMG al-Ḥizb at-taqaddumī al-ištirākī  'Progressive Socialist Party', French Parti socialiste progressiste , abbreviation PSP ) was founded in 1949 by Kamal Jumblat and is dominated by Druze .

The party is the second Lebanese full member of the Socialist International (alongside the Armenian Revolutionary Federation - Taschnak, which has existed since 1908 ).

According to its program, the PSP is striving for a path to socialism within the framework of the constitutional order of the Lebanese Republic. In fact, it is considered to represent the interests of the Druze and the Jumblat family, which under the Druze of the Lebanon Mountains still has a feudal position and heads a corporate empire.

history

The PSP was founded in 1949 as a non-denominational, secular party that wanted to overcome the boundaries between ethnic and religious groups. Its founders were predominantly educated middle-class members of various denominations. Its long-time chairman Kamal Dschumblat, on the other hand, was the head of one of the richest Druze family clans with feudal descent. He led the party until his assassination in 1977. Druze were disproportionately represented in the party - many of the supporters came from families that had traditionally been the feudal subjects of the Jumblats - but the majority of the members were initially Christians.

The PSP's program included the division of feudal landed property (Kamal Jumblat voluntarily gave up part of his land, but remained one of the richest landowners in Lebanon); a welfare state with health, unemployment and accident insurance; free and compulsory education; Women's suffrage and guaranteed fundamental rights . She wanted to overcome the “National Pact” of 1943, an informal agreement on the distribution of power between denominations - denominational affiliation should no longer be the basis for political representation. She also called for the nationalization of monopoly companies that had been licensed under French colonial rule (Electricité de Beyrouth, Compagnie du Port, Railway Damas-Hama et Prolongements ). The latter led to comparisons between Jumblat and Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and to great distrust of the US leadership. The party's foreign policy advisor, Clovis Maksoud, therefore endeavored to emphasize that the PSP was democratic and anti-communist and that it was also directed against an “imperialist conspiracy” by the Soviet Union .

Kamal Jumblat (1957)

In the 1950s and 60s, Jumblat was the leader of the political left in Lebanon, and had close ties with numerous left-wing leaders of liberation movements in the Third World . He fought the pro-American course of President Camille Chamoun, who ruled from 1952 to 1958, and his Foreign Minister Charles Malik . During the Lebanon crisis in 1958 , the PSP, together with the Communist Party and the Nassist Murabitun militia , supported by the majority of Lebanese Muslims and the United Arab Republic , opposed the pro-American government of Christian President Camille Chamoun. After American troops had put down the uprising, but withdrew again when the new President Fuad Shihab took office, Jumblat resisted attempts by the government to disarm the various militias active in the country and to consolidate the state's monopoly of force. On this he agreed with the leader of the right-wing Christian Kata'ib party, Pierre Gemayel .

Jumblat adhered to the pan-Arabism of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and allied himself with the movement of the non-aligned states and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). However , he mistrusted the Ba'ath government of Syria under Hafiz al-Assad , as he accused it of greater Syrian expansion or "vassalization" efforts that run counter to the concept of a democratic and independent Lebanon. After 1968, Jumblat increasingly supported the armed presence of the PLO in Lebanon, bringing Lebanon into conflict with Israel and itself with the Christian right, which was dominated by Maronite politicians ( National Liberal Party of Camille Chamoun and Kata'ib of Pierre Gemayel and Suleiman Frangieh ). In 1969, the PSP merged with other predominantly left, secular and pan-Arab parties to form the Lebanese National Movement, which rejected Lebanon's sectarian political system, while the Christian-Maronite parties stuck to it.

The militia of the PSP became the most important paramilitary group in Lebanon alongside the Kata'ib (Phalange) of Gemayel and the PLO forces, and after the unleashing of the civil war in 1975 it very quickly became the most important force in the so-called "Muslim" camp of the war ( although many left Lebanese Christians had also belonged to the PSP until 1975). Jumblat, who had initially been an ally of Syria, came into conflict with the leadership of the neighboring country in 1977 and was assassinated on March 16, 1977. Successor as party leader was his son Walid Dschumblat . Under his leadership, the PSP grew from a non-denominational party to a Druze party. Unlike his father, Walid relied on good relations with Syria because he realized that he could not achieve anything in Lebanon against the will of the government there. After the withdrawal of the Israelis from the Schuf Mountains, which were inhabited jointly by Druze and Christians, in the early 1980s, ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of Christian families from the area occurred .

Since the civil war

Walid Dschumblat (approx. 2006)

After the end of the civil war, the supporters of the PSP shrank to a part of the Druze population group. Walid Jumblat and his party initially remained allies of Syria and supported the pro-Syrian leadership of Lebanon. From 1984 to 1989 the PSP was represented in the government of national unity under Rashid Karami . In this cabinet, Walid Jumblat acted as Minister for Public Works. At the same time, he founded numerous companies, some of which were entrusted with public contracts, for example the gasoline sales company CODIGO.

From 2000, Jumblat turned away from Syria and criticized - as the first non-Christian party leader - the continued presence of Syrian troops and, from the point of view of the Syrian government, became a persona non grata . Especially in connection with the so-called cedar revolution , like the Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, he came more and more into conflict with the “protecting power”. On October 1, 2004, a PSP MP, Marwan Hamadeh , survived a carefully planned bomb attack. This was the first in a series of political attacks that killed numerous anti-Syrian politicians, the most famous of which was former Prime Minister Hariri. Most recently, on December 12, 2005, the editor of the newspaper an-Nahar , Gebran Tueni , was killed by a car bomb, a nephew of the Druze PSP MP Marwan Hamadeh.

Following the 2005 Cedar Revolution, the PSP joined the March 14 anti-Syrian Alliance , but left it again in 2009. In January 2011 she formed a coalition with the pro-Syrian alliance of March 8, enabling Najib Mikati to be elected prime minister. The PSP was represented by three ministers in his cabinet. In the unity government of Tammam Salam , in office since February 2014 , in which both the March 8 and March 14 alliances are represented, the PSP has two ministers: Wael Abou Faour heads the health department, Akram Chehayeb the agriculture department.

More recently, the PSP has been described as a party that is hardly concerned with socialist ideology, but primarily with the particular interests of the Druze and especially the Jumblats. The family owns an important corporate network that is active in the construction and real estate sectors, as well as in oil and wine production.

literature

  • Kamal Jumblat: I speak for Lebanon . Zed Press, London 1982, ISBN 0-86232-097-6 (Originally published in French under the title Pour le Liban , an outline of the history of the PSP from the perspective of its chairman, at the same time a justification for Kamal Jumblat's behavior in the start-up phase of the Lebanese Civil war).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wolf-Hagen von Angern: Historical construct and denomination in Lebanon. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2010, p. 173.
  2. ↑ a b Mitra Moussa Nabo: Discursive interaction patterns of the Lebanon conflict. Legitimate intervention and unlawful interference. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2015, p. 17.
  3. ^ Reinhard Wiemer: Governments, Parliaments, Parties and Elections. In: The Near and Middle East. Politics, society, economy, history, culture. Volume 1. Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 1988, pp. 195–210, on p. 201.
  4. ↑ Klaus Storkmann: Secret solidarity. Military relations and military aid of the GDR in the “Third World”. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2012, p. 624.
  5. ^ Bassam Tibi: Political Opposition in West Asia and Africa. Some comparative and typical considerations. In: Göttingen social sciences today. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1990, pp. 162-179, on p. 175.
  6. ↑ a b c d Tobias Schwerna: Lebanon. A Model of Consociational Conflict. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010, p. 35.
  7. ↑ Michael Johnson: All Honorable Men. The Social Origins of War in Lebanon. The Center for Lebanese Studies, Oxford and IB Tauris, London / New York 2001, p. 124.
  8. ↑ a b c Harald Vocke: The Lebanese War. Its Origins and Political Dimensions. C. Hurst & Co., London 1978, p. 28.
  9. ↑ a b Irene L. neighborhood ornamental: Notes from the Minefield. United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945–1958. Columbia University Press, New York 1997/2006, pp. 163-164.
  10. ↑ a b Oren Barak: The Lebanese Army. A National Institution in a Divided Society. State University of New York Press, Albany 2009, p. 94.
  11. ^ Alan Axelrod: The Real History of the Cold War. A new look at the past. Sterling, New York / London 2009, pp. 318-319.
  12. ↑ a b Martin Stäheli: The Syrian Foreign Policy under President Hafez Assad. Balancing acts in global upheaval. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 283-284.
  13. ↑ a b Amaia Goenaga, Elvira Sánchez Mateos: Elites, power and political change in post-war Lebanon. In: Political Regimes in the Arab World. Society and the Exercise of Power. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 2013, pp. 220–245, at pp. 225–226.
  14. ↑ Tom Najem: Lebanon. The Politics of a Penetrated Society. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 2012, p. 17.
  15. ↑ Jeremy Jones: Negotiating Change. The New Politics of the Middle East. IB Tauris, London / New York 2007, p. 111

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