BEIRUT — Lebanon and its politics have always been at once provincial and cosmic, both local and global. Last week’s bye-election in one predominantly Christian district confirmed this once again. The flood of analyses, opinions and predictions concerning the election result has been — like most things political in Lebanon — dazzling in its intensity but either fleeting or imprecise in its consequences.
The election results are important, though, for several reasons, both provincial and cosmic. This was a play within a play within a play within a play, with four distinct levels of symbolism at stake. First is the balance of power among Lebanese Christian leaders in the traditional Maronite mountain heartland; second, the balance of power between the Fouad Siniora government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, who are stuck in a devastating stalemate that has crippled the government and threatens to suffocate the economy; third, the relative strengths of Syrian friends and opponents in Lebanon and the Middle East, given the continued tensions that define Syria’s lingering posture in Lebanon and the intense resistance to it by many Christians and other Lebanese; and, fourth, the state of Arab popular support on both sides of the American- and Iranian-led ideological contest that defines much of the Middle East today.
We did not learn very much new from the election on any of these counts that was not known before. But it is possible that the election results — in the context of these other three political battles — may herald a historic new phase of Lebanese political history that has implications for the rest of the region in terms of the linkage between religion and politics. It is possible that Lebanese Maronite Christians, whose distinct status and critical mass in the mostly Muslim Arab world gave rise to the religion-based system of confessional politics in Lebanon starting in the late 19th Century, may lead the way in the de-confessionalization of the same Lebanese system.
The bye-election in the Metn region was held to fill the seat of assassinated former Industry and Trade Minister Pierre Gemayel — representing in Lebanese Christian terms what a Rockefeller represents in American capitalist terms: the bedrock of identity and power. Pierre Gemayel’s father, former President Amin Gemayel, ran for the seat but lost narrowly to an unknown, Camille Khoury, who was a surrogate for the powerful Christian leader and government opposition thorn Michel Aoun.
In this contest to gauge the relative balance of power among Lebanon’s Maronite Christian leaders, they both won and lost simultaneously. Aoun won in that his proxy candidate Khoury took the parliamentary seat, and he crafted a thin majority of voters from Christian and Muslim communities, but he lost because he took a much smaller share of the Maronite vote than the 60-70 percent he had expected. Gemayel lost because he did not take the contested seat, but he won because he took a majority of Maronite Christian votes and slashed Aoun’s support in that community.
Some people would argue that all this is as significant as election results in voting for the head of the pharmacists syndicate in Marseilles or an appeals court judge in Kansas City. At one level, this may be so. But these results carry real consequence because the Christians of Lebanon are now severely split and polarized politically, and their behavior will impact on the three other concentric ideological battles underway in Lebanon, the Middle East and globally.
It is too early to see the precise consequences of the severe split among Christians, especially the main Maronite community. Aoun and Gemayel, now the two leading Christian political figures, both represent solid electoral communities, and both are intimately allied to opposing camps in the Siniora government-Hizbullah face-off.
While the Sunnis, Shiites and Druze tend to enjoy strong national leadership and representation, the Christians do not. They have been fracturing for some years, under the cumulative and very heavy pressures of years of Syrian domination and manipulation, Israeli interference in Lebanon, and other domestic factors. Their main symbol of power — the president — is isolated and widely discredited now because the sitting president is seen as a Syrian surrogate.
Aoun’s return from exile in 2005, and his alliance with Hizbullah sparked the major intra-Christian fissure that was confirmed by the election Sunday. Consequently, each of the two main Christian camps has had to form strong alliances with the leading Muslim parties in order to preserve their clout and relevance. Aoun and Suleiman Franjieh joined with Shiite Hizbullah, and Gemayel and Samir Geagea with the Hariri-led Sunnis.
This suggests that a badly split Christian community must turn to ideological alliances in order to preserve its role and secure its interests. Whether this is an early sign of an organic de-confessionalization of the Lebanese political system is too early to know. But it seems worth watching.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 08 August 2007
Word Count: 799
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