Hariri’s son poised for landslide in Beirut poll

Brian Whitaker in Beirut
Saturday May 28, 2005
The Guardian

Saad al-Hariri, the son of Lebanon’s assassinated former premier,
looks poised to sweep the board in Beirut tomorrow in the first
parliamentary elections since Syrian troops left. In pre-election
horse-trading, Mr Hariri’s Future bloc has already won almost half of
the capital’s seats, where nine of his candidates are unopposed, and
appears likely to take the remaining 10 seats through the ballot box.

The elections, starting tomorrow and spread over four weekends across
Lebanon, are likely to give Mr Hariri, 35, and his allies a majority
in the 128-seat parliament. It is assumed that he will become prime
minister if he wants the job.

This is a spectacular rise for a man who entered politics only this
year. He was running the family’s businesses until the bomb that
killed his father, Rafik, on February 14, catapulted him into the
limelight.

After the bombing, international pressure grew for the withdrawal of
Syrian troops, not least to ensure that elections such as these could
take place without interference from Damascus.

But despite the Syrians’ departure, and the trumpeting of Lebanon’s
“cedar revolution”, few people in Beirut believe that the election
will be a showcase of democracy.

One complaint is that parties form alliances to carve up the seats,
often depriving voters of a choice. In most of the country, Zeina abu
Rizk wrote in the Beirut Daily Star yesterday, “competition is almost
non-existent, a feeling similar to that of the era of Syrian hegemony,
with results being known in advance”.

Michel Aoun, the anti-Syrian Christian leader, said: “We fought
against Rustom Ghazali [the Syrian intelligence chief], who used to
create election tickets and allocate the quotas. Now we have several
‘Rustom Ghazalis’, one in each area.”

Mr Aoun, a former general who returned from exile in Paris earlier
this month, is struggling to find the seats he feels entitled to and
has desperately been seeking allies.

On the other side of the political divide, a former prime minister,
Omar Karami, a Syria loyalist whose government was toppled by popular
protests in February, has walked away in disgust, saying: “The
elections aren’t elections – they are simply appointments.”

Others object to the Syrian-inspired election law that created large
electoral districts – thought to favour pro-Syrian candidates – and to
the role that religion still plays in Lebanese politics.

All the parliamentary seats are allocated in advance to members of
Lebanon’s various sects: Maronite Christians get 35 seats, Sunni
Muslims 27, Shia Muslims 27, Greek Orthodox 14, Greek Catholics eight,
Druzes eight, Armenian Orthodox five, Alawites two and one each for
Armenian Catholics and Evangelicals.

The confessional system also goes right to the top: only a Christian
can become president, and only a Sunni prime minister. The Shia,
thought to account for about 40% of Lebanon’s population, are excluded
from both jobs, as is the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt.

One organisation campaigning against this is Hayyabina (Let’s go),
which says the time has come to make Lebanon a secular republic. It
blames “entrenched political elites” for perpetuating confessionalism
in order to protect their own positions.

Political reform is likely to be a priority for the new
parliament. But while most people agree that the system is skewed,
they are less sure what to do about it.