By Wassim Mroue – ZOUK MOSBEH, Lebanon: Student candidates supportive of the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb (Phalange) Party and their March 14 allies swept student council elections at Notre Dame University Friday, winning 37 of 38 seats to maintain their grip on the campus for the fourth consecutive year.
March 14 students clinched all seats in the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Faculty of Architecture, Art and Design, Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences and Faculty of Natural and Applied Science.
Competing in the electoral race against the LF and the Kataeb were Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, Suleiman Franjieh’s Marada Movement and other March 8 groups.
Oliver Zakhia, an FPM-supported candidate, won one of two seats at the Faculty of Political Science, Public Administration and Diplomacy.
The Progressive Socialist Party took part in the polls, allied with the FPM.
“We have good ties with all parties there and our alliance with the Free Patriotic Movement had no political dimensions, merely academic [ones],” Bassel Aoud, PSP’s official responsible for private universities, told The Daily Star.
In a statement issued following the elections, NDU said that polls were held “in a happy atmosphere, affirming that students enjoy high moral values and a distinguished democratic spirit,” without “commotion, rumors and concerns.”
Tamim Abu Karroum, who supervised the elections on behalf of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections, said that the day-long electoral process was “good, calm and saw no brawls.” He also said that the organization of the polls by NDU’s administration was “good.”
But as preliminary results were announced, a scuffle broke out between the Lebanese Army and Kataeb students celebrating victory outside the campus.
The army arrested three students, prompting their angry classmates to protest by blocking the Zouk Mosbeh road, leading to traffic congestion.
Patrick Risha, the head of the Kataeb Youth Department, told The Daily Star that the army assaulted students, leaving several students injured, and arrested three of them after some launched celebratory fireworks. The detainees were later released.
Speaking to The Daily Star shortly before the polls closed, Carl Shayeb, the head of the LF students at NDU, said the electoral process “is good so far.” “We consider this university to be representative of Christian public opinion.”
Shayeb said that FPM students were not sincere about their promises to work on reducing tuition fees.
“In 2009, they rejected our proposal to deal with fees imposed by the university apart from tuition fees,” he said.
“The Maronite Mariamite Order determines the tuition fees every year and we could do nothing in this regard,” he said.
Shayeb boasted the achievements of the student council in the previous three years when it was dominated by the March 14 coalition.
“We bought a bus which cost us triple our budget in order to transport students from the faraway parking lot to protect them from rain and sun,” he said.
The program of the March 14-supported Active Student List promises to boost the financial aid budget.
Hitting back, Elie Ghanimeh, an FPM supporter, said that in 2009 the FPM students in the council were a minority that could not block any decision. The FPM-supported Students of Change list vowed to put “an end to the annual increase in tuition fees that has been recurrent in the past three years.”
Ghanimeh noted that not all needy students benefited from financial aid, describing those who receive aid as “only students with connections.”
A number of achievements made by FPM students for the university when they led the student council before 2005, including the introduction of online registration and reducing the engineering internship fee, were outlined in its program.
In the end, students voting for either list cited similar reasons for their support. Johnny, an engineering major, said he voted for the March 8 list because they work for the good of students.
“For instance, thanks to them we have been registering online … since the beginning of the 2000s,” he said.
But another student who refused to give his name said that he voted for the March 14 slate since students from the group “work better for the university and their political background is better.”
“Every year they provide needy students with books for free,” said the financial engineering student.
Jessica Hallaq, a senior political science major who was running independently, said that neither of the camps were working sufficiently for the benefit of students. – With additional reporting by Enora Castagné