Lebanese by-election agonizingly close

BEIRUT – Well, in the words Dan Rather, the elec­tion in Metn is as tight “as the rusted lug nuts on a ‘55 Ford.” Pha­langeist Party offi­cials say they won by a few hun­dred votes. The Free Patri­otic Move­ment says they won by a few hun­dred votes. Both sides have claimed vic­tory and both sides have said there were vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties. Here’s a round up of the var­i­ous sto­ries from Google News. In gen­eral how­ever, it looks like 43 per­cent of the vot­ers came out in Metn, an aston­ish­ingly high num­ber for an off-year elec­tion. (How many of those votes were Syr­i­ans nat­u­ral­ized as Lebanese and bused in from Dam­as­cus is unclear. But the voted for the Aounist can­di­date.) Today’s con­test shaped up as a bat­tle for the right to claim the lead­er­ship of the Chris­tians in Lebanon. If Aoun loses, his chance of ever becom­ing pres­i­dent will be lower than a snake’s belly, chan­nelling Rather again, because his appeal to the Shi’ite-led oppo­si­tion was that he claimed to rep­re­sent the Chris­tians. If Amin Gemayel loses, it will be a huge blow for the pro-government forces. (Amin Gemayel is the father of Pierre and a for­mer pres­i­dent. There is much pub­lic sym­pa­thy because he lost his son.)

I was in Jdei­deh today, near where Pierre Gemaymel was assas­si­nated last Novem­ber and the Aounists were out in force with more peo­ple, more energy and more orange. It was inter­est­ing talk­ing to both sides. Aounists would tie them­selves in log­i­cal knots try­ing to explain how their alliance with a pro-Syrian oppo­si­tion — which includes the Syr­ian Social Nation­al­ist Party, for Pete’s sake — doesn’t make them pro-Syrian or that their leader will have to lis­ten to Syria as pay­back. The near­est to con­sis­tency I was able to glean was some­thing along the lines of, “We were against Syria when it was here, but it’s not here now so let’s be friends with it. Besides, all those other guys (Jum­blatt, Hariri, Geagea) were in Syria’s camp.”
Sure. What­ever.
The Pha­langeists were even more offen­sive. One man told me the seat “belongs” to them. When I said how can any elected office “belong” to any­one in a democ­racy, he said the Chris­tians (and the Maronites espe­cially) were the first to bring democ­racy to Lebanon. And so, it’s only right that no one run against Amin Gemayel. Huh?
You have to remem­ber, the Lebanese are an emo­tional peo­ple. They like to let sen­ti­ment over­rule rules. And while Gemayel sup­port­ers may admit it’s per­fectly legal for Aoun to run a can­di­date in the spe­cial elec­tion to replace the young Gemayel, they think it’s very bad form. As one Lebanese friend of mine told me when I said it seemed like Aoun was legally in the right, “We don’t have laws in Lebanon; we have ethics.” And for sure, many of the Gemayel sup­port­ers were incensed that Aoun would dare run a can­di­date against the father of a dead guy. Doesn’t he real­ize that the seat “belongs” to the Gemayels?
There were many threats of vio­lence, but so far it seems any inci­dents were either small or suc­cess­fully kept under wraps. No one has said there was any fight­ing, but hell, the night is young, and nei­ther side is likely to con­cede. Offi­cial results are due tomor­row. Both sides have accused the other of funny busi­ness, with Amin Gemayel say­ing “the dead were vot­ing” in Bourj Ham­moud, the Armen­ian Quar­ter that looks noth­ing like Chicago.
More tomorrow…

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