BEIRUT — Lebanon is known for its wines. The Bekaa Val­ley pro­duces some truly excel­lent vin­tages. But what’s the favorite wine of the Gemayel polit­i­cal dynasty? “Michel Aoun won the elec­tion with Armen­ian votes, waaaaah!” (Say it out loud, it’s fun­nier.)
Yes, Michel Aoun’s can­di­date Camille Khoury, who no one has heard of before, won the elec­tion in the Metn dis­trict by a few hun­dred votes because the [Armenians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians_in_Lebanon) strongly backed him. The Maronite Chris­tians, how­ever, backed for­mer pres­i­dent Amin Gemayel by a large mar­gin. This has led Gemayel, the father of [Pierre Gemayel](http://www.back-to-iraq.com/2006/11/pierre_gemayel_has_been_assass.php), the slain indus­try min­is­ter for whose seat the elec­tion was held, to com­plain that Aoun doesn’t rep­re­sent the real Chris­tians of Lebanon and his elec­tion is some­how ille­git­i­mate. News­flash: Arme­ni­ans are Chris­tians and have been before any other nation could say that, dat­ing back to 301 A.D., before there even *were* [Maronites](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maronite). Gemayel is also call­ing on the reli­gious author­i­ties and the state to force a recount or even a new elec­tion in the Bourj Ham­moud dis­trict, an Armen­ian enclave where Gemayel said the dead were vot­ing. As I said before, Bourj Ham­moud looks noth­ing like Chicago.

But lest you think I’m rev­el­ing in Aoun’s vic­tory, in his typ­i­cal mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal fash­ion at a press con­fer­ence just now, Aoun said all the Chris­tians in par­lia­ment shouldn’t be there because only he rep­re­sents the Chris­tians of Lebanon.
Puh-leeze. Gen­eral, you won by, what? 400 votes? A lit­tle humil­ity would be in order here. It might actu­ally go a ways toward unit­ing the Chris­tians and, by exten­sion, the rest of Lebanon. But no one loses grace­fully here, so look for a lot of nasty accu­sa­tions, pos­si­ble street scuf­fles and a fur­ther hard­en­ing of posi­tions as Aoun struts about like a tri­umphant pea­cock and Gemayel con­tin­ues to call the “waaahm­bu­lance.” (I feel his pain; his polit­i­cal career may be over.)
Aoun is a part of the oppo­si­tion and wants to be pres­i­dent above all else. If he had won the elec­tion deci­sively, he might have improved his polit­i­cal stand­ing. As it is, he lost votes among the Maronites — for whom the pres­i­dency is reserved — and just squeaked out a win. The Chris­tians of Lebanon are as divided as ever, and they hold the key to the polit­i­cal stale­mate going in Lebanon right now. Which way their sup­port ulti­mately tip will decide which way Lebanon goes, given the knife’s edge upon which the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion rests.
Inter­est­ingly, this vote won’t actu­ally change the bal­ance of par­lia­ment and the pro-U.S. gov­ern­ment bloc will main­tain its 5-seat major­ity. Why? Because the speaker of par­lia­ment, a Syrian-ally, refuses to rec­og­nize the vote as valid, see­ing as it wasn’t approved by the Syrian-installed pres­i­dent, Emile Lahoud. Par­lia­ment also hasn’t met in months.
So after a bit­ter cam­paign with threats of vio­lence and apoc­a­lypse, noth­ing has changed on the ground in Lebanon. The coun­try is still split, the pres­i­dency is still up for grabs and both sides in this power strug­gle for con­trol of this lit­tle patch of land still have their fin­gers on their respec­tive trig­gers. We’ll go through this all over again in Sep­tem­ber when the pres­i­dent is selected by a deeply divided parliament.