ANALYSIS: FRESH BLOW FOR LEBANESE GOVERNMENTNICHOLAS BLANFORD OF THE TIMES, IN LEBANON

Times Online
August 6, 2007

The victory for Michael Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement in yesterday’s
by-election will disappoint Western backers of the Lebanese Government
as it could further weaken the already-threatened administration of
Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister.

With the difference in seats in Parliament between the Opposition
and the Government extremely slender, every seat is considered crucial.

The result will also boost Syria, which had given its full backing to
Aoun’s candidate and which sees his party’s alliance with Hezbollah
as a way of increasing influence in Lebanon, and eventually bringing
down the Government.

However, despite all of this, the Lebanese Government still has reasons
to take heart. Fundamentally, this is because Christian support for
Mr Aoun, and his party’s pro-Hezbollah direction, is weaker than it
actually appears.

The evidence suggests that some two thirds of Christian Maronites did
not actually vote for Mr Aoun’s party – instead they voted for the
Government’s candidate in the by-election, Amin Gemayel. It appears
to have been the pro-Syrian groups and the Armenians who secured the
victory for Mr Aoun.

The slump in Christian support can be put down to some of his
controversial strategic decisions over the last two years, since he
won Parliamentary elections with an impressive 70 per cent of the
Maronite Christian vote.

In particular, he took the unlikely and highly unusual decision to
form an alliance with Hezbollah, which is a Shia Muslim organisation
funded by Iran and backed by Syria.

This has flummoxed many of his traditional Christian supporters,
who recall Mr Aoun’s previous speeches in which he sharply criticised
Syrian involvement in Lebanon, and supported previous UN resolutions
to disarm Hezbollah.

With that in mind, his alliance with Hezbollah looks like political
opportunism in the extreme, and a bid to dispose of Fouad Siniora’s
Government at all costs.

It is an alliance that not only irritates some Christians, but also
leaves many in Hezbollah feeling uneasy. Bearing in mind Aoun’s
previous anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah stances in the 1990s, many
within the Shia movement do not trust him.

A sideline to today’s election is undoubtedly Mr Aoun’s personal desire
to become Lebanese President, in elections which are due shortly.

He will claim that his party’s by-election victory stands him in good
stead, but the voting patterns in that victory suggest it may be very
much in the balance.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress