Monday Morning, Lebanon
May 23 2005

As unexpected electoral alliances emerge Aiming for a Parliament to
forge a `new Lebanon’

Campaigning kicked off last week for parliamentary elections in
Lebanon as former war foes formed unlikely political alliances. The
influential head of the Maronite Church, meanwhile, reiterated calls
for efforts to ensure the polls are representative of the country’s
various sects.

In a move seen by the press as a step towards the first genuine
attempt at national reconciliation since the end of the 1975-1990
war, MP Walid Jumblatt and Saadeddine Hariri, son of the slain former
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, joined forces with former foes.
Jumblatt and Setrida Geagea, wife of the jailed leader of the
Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, have formed an alliance and announced
a joint electoral list, pledging to `turn the page on the past’.
The Lebanese Forces and militants of Jumblatt’s mainly-Druze
Progressive Socialist Party fought fierce battles for supremacy in
the Shouf Mountains, southeast of Beirut, during the war.
Hariri chose Solange Gemayel, widow of slain former President-elect
Bashir Gemayel, as the sole Maronite candidate on his electoral list
for Beirut’s three constituencies.
Bashir Gemayel was a former leader of the Lebanese Forces during the
war.
Rafik Hariri’s assassination on February 14 was the catalyst that
prompted the Christian and Muslim opposition to unite and, with the
help of France, the United States and the United Nations, secure a
Syrian military pullout from the country last month ahead of the
crucial polls, which open May 29.
The Maronite Church, led by Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, continues to
complain that the polls will not meet the aspirations of Lebanon’s
large Christian community.
`Some politicians are only after their own interests’, Sfeir told
visitors last week. `Elections must be representative’.
Sfeir is opposed to elections on the basis of a 2000 law which he
says marginalizes the Christians.
The law, drafted under the auspices of Syria, calls for elections to
be held in larger districts where Christians are not well represented
and where Christian candidates end up being chosen by Muslim voters.
The Lebanese press, which hailed the new alliances, reported that
Patriarch Sfeir was mulling plans to hold a Christian conference to
review developments in the country.
Opposition MP Farid el-Khazen echoed Sfeir and said: `We consider the
2000 law the burial ground of democratic life in Lebanon. Yesterday’s
[May 15] electoral lists show that the results of the polls are being
fabricated even before they are announced. An essential sector of the
Lebanese people is being thrown out of the political game’.
General Michel Aoun, former head of a military government removed
from his `bunker’ in the presidential palace by a joint
Lebanese-Syrian military operation in October 1990, also criticized
Hariri’s Future Bloc and Jumblatt’s party, accusing them of
`treason’.
Opposition politicians, who want elections in smaller districts, have
accused Hariri and Jumblatt of breaking ranks with the rest of the
opposition and agreeing to hold elections based on the 2000 law.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has close ties with Syria, has
rejected any calls for the amendment of the 2000 law.
He has announced a single candidates’ list for his Amal Movement
group and Hezballah for the two Southern constituencies which make up
part of the Shiite heartland.
Hariri has announced 19 candidates for the city’s 19 seats, of which
10 are Christian and the rest Muslim.
In addition to Solange Gemayel, Amin Sherri of Hezballah is a
candidate for one of the city’s two Shiite seats.
Standing for one of the two Greek Orthodox seats will be Gebran
Tueni, a member of the opposition Kornet Shehwan group and the son of
newspaper proprietor Ghassan Tueni, who in the 1970s served as a
minister.
A key ally of Hariri’s father and a former justice minister, Bahij
Tabbara, is to stand for one of six Sunnite seats.
Other candidates on the Hariri list are the same as those who stood
in the last elections in 2000 in support of his father.
These include candidates for the four Armenian seats, excluding
members of the Tashnag Party which has widespread support among
Beirut’s significant Armenian minority.