Snapshot
In June 2013, citizens began honking their horns outside Lebanon’s Parliament to tell MPs that their time in office had expired. The protest spread until they were honked at everywhere they went.
According to Lebanese Electoral Law No. 25/2008, the official mandate of an elected Parliament is four years. After one term is over, new elections must take place in line with civil and constitutional rights guaranteed for the people. Nonetheless, the 2009 Parliament, with a term set to expire in May 2013, voted to extend its mandate for a further 17 months.
On June 6, 2013, I and five other youths gathered in the crowded Abo Assaf cafe in the heart of the bustling Lebanese capital. We were dismayed by the Parliament’s decision, and were determined to do something about it. We invited others, growing to a group of 15 that started brainstorming ideas for pressuring Parliament to call new elections. Many demonstrations had already occurred, but all had been repetitious, conventional, and ultimately ineffective.
We wanted results. We wanted something easy to participate in, yet flashy, nonviolent, and doable with zero budget. After many ideas were fleshed out, someone said: “We must not allow them to stay in Parliament in a quiet atmosphere.” This sparked ideas of noise disruptions, from music to whistling, until finally someone suggested the idea of honking horns, which the group eventually unanimously endorsed.
We learned that you do not need a lot of money to launch a strong and effective campaign. What it took was a bit of creativity and a lot of persistence.
We tried it first using air horns. In groups of ones and twos, we entered the zone around the Parliament. Because groups are not allowed to enter together, some of us were waiting at coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels within the vicinity of the Parliament. The first horn took the policemen by surprise, and then the horns of 35 participants filled the air.
“The horns were an obstacle,” said one MP to a TV reporter as he emerged from a parliamentary session. “We were not able to hear each other.” Our presence was impossible to ignore. We were interrupting business-as-usual. Our discontent and demands were being heard loud and clear.
We continued with the action on a weekly basis while Parliament was in session. Participant numbers increased dramatically until the police reacted by barring the public from the Parliament zone. In response, people began to honk from their balconies, in the streets, and from their cars wherever they spotted a car with the parliamentary insignia.
Our protest had started with 20 people with handheld air horns. Within three weeks, it had grown to thousands of people, using every kind of honking device imaginable. People were honking at MPs everywhere they went. Members of Parliament were visibly disturbed; some of them changed their license plates to hide their identity to avoid being honked at.
In spite of this widespread wave of protest, as well as all the media coverage and the nuisance caused to MPs, new elections have not yet been held. After the initial 17-month extension passed, the Parliament enacted another extension of its mandate for an additional 31 months, until June 2017.
Nonetheless, we created a new culture of protest in Lebanon: Now it is a tradition to honk at illegal parliamentarians whenever you’ve spotted one. With every honk, parliamentarians are reminded of what they know deep in their horn-battered bones: They are unlawful representatives of the public, effectively “occupying” the people’s place.
This fight is not over. We will honk at them until they are gone.
Originally published in Beautiful Rising.
Key theory
Before the honk protest began, MPs pretended to have a mandate; they were engaged in a pantomime play of democracy, which the public, as audience, passively participated in. If you passed an MP in the street or walked by the Parliament building, you could only be disgruntled by the fact that they had a false mandate. The honking campaign turned this banality into an outrage, making the familiar situation of non-representative government seem visibly odd, causing the MPs to feel out of place, and revealing to the audience (the Lebanese public) the hidden mechanisms of the play.
Key tactic
Lebanese people love music, whistling, honking, and clapping. Horns are usually used as a warning of danger, which made a strong statement about the illegal status of MPs. Noise-making objects, such as horns, are small, widely available, and easy to sneak through police checkpoints. They are disruptive yet nonviolent; they peacefully penetrated the walls and windows of the Parliament building, yet were loud enough to challenge its business-as-usual atmosphere.
Key principle
Spot a parliamentarian? Honk! This was the simple formula that allowed the protest to spread quickly and widely. All that was needed was a horn, and knowing what to honk at: a Parliament license plate, the Parliament building, or the MPs themselves. This straightforward concept enabled large-scale public participation across different locations and times.