Tomorrow’s by-elections in Metn

BEIRUT – Tomorrow’s by-elections have turned into a crit­i­cal test of polit­i­cal power here in Lebanon and the results will be seen as a bell­weather for the influ­ence of either the United States or the Islamic Repub­lic Iran. Some back­ground on the elec­tion is here, in a col­umn I wrote for Spot​-on​.com. I’ll wait while you read and come back.
All done? Good. Right now, the March 14 alliance, pri­mar­ily made up of Saad Hariri’s Future Move­ment, Walid Jumblatt’s Pro­gres­sive Social­ist Party, Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces and Amin Gemayel’s Pha­lange Party (which is related to the LF), is freak­ing out over the elec­tions. They’re act­ing like peo­ple who are scared to death of los­ing. Mean­while, Gen. Michel Aoun’s Free Patri­otic Move­ment is act­ing like a party that’s already won. (Aoun is allied with the pro-Syrian fac­tion in Lebanon and includes Hezbol­lah, Amal Move­ment and the Syr­ian Social­ist National Party.)

I was speak­ing with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Aoun’s peo­ple yes­ter­day and they expect to win. This rather con­fus­ing report from Infor­ma­tion Inter­na­tional (caveat emp­tor) say that 60 per­cent of the Maronite vote will go to Amin Gemayel while 85 per­cent of the Armen­ian vote will go to Kamile Khoury, the FPM can­di­date. What does that mean in pre­dict­ing who will ulti­mately win? No idea. But I’ve seen some num­bers from var­i­ous out­lets point­ing to an Aounist vic­tory with about 53 per­cent of the vote. The gen­eral swept the region in the 2005 elec­tions.
Of course there will be voter fraud. Already there are sto­ries of Syr­i­ans with Lebanese cit­i­zen­ship being bussed in to vote and my fiancée and I per­son­ally wit­nessed an attempt at vote buy­ing on the part of the “pro-democracy” March 14 alliance. Vot­ing for Gemayel gets you $150, by the way.
This elec­tion is split­ting the Chris­tians of Lebanon. They’re the only group with a sig­nif­i­cant split these days. It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to say that almost all Sun­nis and Druze sup­port the March 14 move­ment while almost all Shi’ites sup­port the oppo­si­tion bloc. But the Chris­tians are a dif­fer­ent story.
His­tor­i­cally split, some of the fiercest and most vicious bat­tles of the 1975 – 90 civil war were fought between the Chris­t­ian groups. In the wan­ing days of the con­flict, Aoun as care­taker prime min­is­ter, bat­tled Lebanese Forces mili­ti­a­men for con­trol of ports in order to seize the rev­enue gen­er­ated from them. (He suc­ceeded, mostly.)
Today, Aoun and the Gemayel fam­ily — from whose Pha­lange Party the Lebanese Forces mili­tia split off — are still at each oth­ers’ throats, mak­ing this elec­tion a con­test for the right to claim the lead­er­ship of the Chris­tians of Lebanon. If Aoun wins — and there’s a real chance he might — that will indi­cate the Chris­t­ian heart­land has shifted away from the gov­ern­ment.
If Aoun’s can­di­date loses, how­ever, Aoun will no longer be able to tell his bud­dies in the oppo­si­tion he can rally Lebanon’s Chris­tians, which was a key sell­ing point when he joined that side. His chances of ever becom­ing pres­i­dent — which can only hap­pen if the oppo­si­tion brings down the March 14 gov­ern­ment and sup­ports Aoun for the top spot — will be zero.
(By the way, although Aoun’s peo­ple say he isn’t pro-Syrian, if you’re allied with pro-Syrian par­ties, con­tinue to oppose the fac­tion that’s vehe­mently anti-Syrian, work to bring down the anti-Syrian gov­ern­ment and run for a seat that was vacated because of an assas­si­na­tion that was prob­a­bly at the hands of Syr­ian agents, you’re pretty much “objec­tively” pro-Syrian. All of which makes his bid for the pres­i­dency so galling to half of the coun­try. They already have one Syr­ian stooge for a pres­i­dent in the form of Emile Lahoud. After the Syr­ian troops left, isn’t it time, they argue, for some­one who’s not in Dam­as­cus’ back pocket?)
At any rate, Lebanon doesn’t really do “los­ing grace­fully,” so there is a high chance of vio­lence in the com­ing days. Already tonight, there have been scuf­fles around the Aounists’ head­quar­ters in Man­souriya and the army and secu­rity forces are out in force. Both sides have indi­cated they’re ready to fight, with the LF lead­er­ship speak­ing of will­ing to spill blood and Aoun him­self say­ing Sat­ur­day that “our fists” are ready to pro­tect peo­ple.
I’m head­ing up tomor­row early after IraqS­log­ger duties to keep an eye on things. Will report in when I get back.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts