Sawti’s 8 Values Criteria

How Sawti chose the alternative parties presented on our website:

After consulting with experts in their political fields, Sawti devised its own system for identifying parties who have Lebanon’s best interest at their core.

Sawti’s 8 Values Criteria are the result of those conversations:

Sawti’s 8 Values Criteria.

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Non-sectarian and secular, actively pursuing the establishment of a civil state, based on the principles of citizenship.
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No links to the current political establishment, and not part of the March 8th or March 14th rival alliances.
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The political party did not participate in any aspect of the Civil War.
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No foreign agendas, nor outside influence.
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Political platforms must include concrete policies that aim to achieve economic justice, environmental justice, and social security.
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Democratic in nature, ideology, and governance.
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Financial transparency at all levels, including publicly-available statements.*
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No discriminatory practices. Active steps to create equality for all members of society. No hateful, discriminatory, sectarian, or racist speech in rhetoric or campaigns.

*The Sawti team recognizes the complexity in verifying a political party’s financial transparency. In the absence of unified financial standards or mechanisms for political parties to demonstrate financial transparency, the Sawti team cannot evaluate the political parties for financial transparency. Instead, we are asking the parties the below questions and will be sharing their responses (or lack of response) with you. These questions are in no way exhaustive or sufficient to verify a party’s financial transparency but we hope that they serve as a first step in your informed decision making about which alternative parties to support. It will likely be necessary to refer to the party’s websites or other sources of information about the party’s finances.

What is your party’s annual income?
What is the average donation received by the party?
How much is the largest donation received by the party?
How is your income spent? Please provide a percentage breakdown of your expenditures (ex. salaries, media, ground campaigns, etc.).
Do you regularly publish your parties financial statements publicly? Please provide a link.

Each political party represented below has been evaluated using our criteria above.

About the Parties on Sawti’s Website:

Sawti is an informational website, and does not endorse any single party that appears here. We are committed to evaluating any new political parties that join the alternative space, based on our 8 Values Criteria.

Each party on Sawti’s website has been evaluated based on documentation they provided. We recognize that this is a complex matter, and will do our best to always add disclaimers where appropriate.

Our goal is to provide you with the information that you need in order to come to your own conclusions.