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LEBANON: Channel bans political humor in run-up to election

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While the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces are busy preparing for the upcoming parliamentary runoff on June 7, the popular television channel LBC is taking its own security measures by banning all political satire until after the elections, the daily Al Akhbar (Arabic) reported this week.

What kind of satire? Below is a scene from LBC’s hugely popular political show, ‘Bas Mat Watan,’ which has been known to raise the hackles of Lebanon’s political elite in the past.

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The clip features an actor impersonating the U.S.-backed prime minister, Fouad Siniora, including an exaggerated imitation of his face, which was partially frozen after he suffered a stroke.

The words also have been changed to portray Siniora as a money-grubbing puppet of the powerful Future Party leader Saad Hariri.

‘There are some people who don’t want me as the head of the Lebanese government, I said I would leave no problem, but Saad [Hariri] wouldn’t let me,’ the lyrics taunt, referring to the political deadlock that eventually led to clashes in May 2008.

The station reportedly has suspended producer Charbel Khalil, the comedic mastermind behind ‘Bas Mat Watan’ and the satirical puppet show ‘Douma Cratia.’

He was accused by the editor of the daily newspaper Ad-Diyar of gratuitously stoking political tensions in what is already shaping up to be a tight race between the U.S.-backed March 14 coalition and the Hezbollah-led March 8 movement.

It’s not the first time Khalil has created a stir.

In 2006, Hezbollah supporters took to the streets, destroying property and burning tires after ‘Bas Mat Watan’ aired an unflattering impression of the party’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

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Critics fear a similar reaction could jeopardize the fate of the entire electoral process.

‘Bas Mat Watan,’ a play on words that can translate as either ‘but a nation died’ or ‘smile of a nation,’ first aired in the early 1990s, and its success encouraged the creation of similar shows on Future, New TV and O TV.

-- Meris Lutz, in Beirut


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