Swing to right-wing Christian leader Aoun in Lebanese elections

It seems increasingly unlikely that the main anti-Syrian opposition, led by Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated former prime minister Rafik Hariri, and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, will be able to win a majority in the 128-seat parliament. There are now only 28 seats left to contest in the fourth and final stage of the election due in North Lebanon on Sunday, and the opposition forces have so far won only 46 seats.

Far from the “freedom” and “democracy” that the Bush administration claimed the elections would bring about, they have revealed the sectarian divisions that simmered below the surface during the Syrian occupation of the last 15 years.

All 19 seats in Beirut in the first round of the election went to the Hariri list, whereas in the second round of the election in South Lebanon, the pro-Syrian Hezbollah and its Shia allies took all 23 seats. Both results were expected and both elections saw low turnouts. Hezbollah and its allies won a further 10 seats in the third round in the Bekaa Valley.

After the “Cedar Revolution,” the anti-Syrian protests that took place in February and March following Rafik Hariri’s assassination, it was assumed that the mainstream opposition would sweep into power with 80 or 90 seats. Syrian troops have now been completely withdrawn from Lebanon under demands from the United States and Western governments.

Saad Hariri’s list of candidates included “moderate” Christian parties—the Qorne t Shehwan Gathering, and the Lebanese Forces. Although Qornet Shehwan is led by the Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, it appears that the Christian elite feel their interests are better served by Aoun, despite the fact that many of his seats were won by his alliance with pro-Syrian politicians.

Sfeir had opposed the elections going ahead without changing the present voting system that was set up under Syrian domination, but was pushed aside as the US insisted on an immediate vote.

Aoun, leading the rump of the Lebanese army, fought against the Syrian army in 1990. This conflict ended the Lebanese civil war when he was defeated. It was followed by the Syrian occupation, which the US supported to stabilise the country after the civil war and in return for Syrian support in the Gulf War against Iraq. Aoun fled to France, where he has been in exile for the last 15 years, enabling him to denounce the Hariri-Jumblatt opposition leaders as a “corrupt political class” that cooperated with Syria over the last period only to go into opposition “looking out for their own interests.”

In the campaign for the northern Lebanon region, Aoun has brought together two of the most pro-Syrian politicians from the previous government, former premier Omar Karami and former interior minister Sulieman Franjieh. The grandson of the president who invited the Syrians into Lebanon in 1976 at the beginning of the civil war, Franjieh is said to be a close friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/leb-j17.shtml