ROBERT FISK: LEBANESE STRIKE A BLOW AT US-BACKED GOVERNMENT

The Independent/UK
Published: 07 August 2007

They’ve done it again. The Arabs have, once more, followed democracy
and voted for the wrong man.

Just as the Palestinians voted for Hamas when they were supposed to
vote for the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, so the Christian
Maronites of Lebanon appear to have voted for a man opposed to the
majority government of Fouad Siniora in Beirut. Camille Khoury –
with a strong vote from the Armenian Tashnak party – won by 418 votes
the seat that belonged to Pierre Gemayel, murdered last November by
gunmen supposedly working for the Syrian security services.

While the Maronite vote had increased against Gemayel’s showing in
2005 elections, the result was a stunning blow to the American-backed
government – how devastating that phrase "American-backed" has now
become in the Middle East – in Lebanon and allowed Hizbollah’s ally,
ex-General Michel Aoun to claim that "they cannot beat me". Mr Aoun
is a candidate in presidential elections later this year.

True, the voting figures showed huge support for Pierre Gemayel’s
father Amin – himself an ex-president- who was standing for the
parliamentary seat of his murdered son. Although he was a weak and
fractious leader – Amin paid a state visit to Damascus to re-cement
"fraternal" ties after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon – he
proved himself a brave man in the aftermath of his son’s murder,
calling upon Lebanese to support the government rather than submit
once more to the domination of Syria.

Khoury’s score in the Metn hills above Beirut – and a 418 conquest out
of 79,000 votes is hardly a crushing political victory – yet again
emphasises the divisions among the Christians of Lebanon who have
traditionally fought each other – rather than their more obvious
enemies – throughout Lebanese history. The Crusaders fought each
other in Tyre when Saladin was at the gates of the city; in 1990,
Mr Aoun’s own Lebanese army fought the Christian Phalangist militia
while still trying to defend themselves from the Syrians.

They lost both battles.

Amin’s father Pierre – grandfather of the MP murdered last November –
founded the Phalange in 1936 after being inspired by the Nazi Berlin
Olympics. "I thought Lebanon needed some of this order," he admitted
to me shortly before his death; the original Phalange dressed in brown
shirts and gave the Hitler salute. But they had turned themselves
into a neo-respectable right-wing party by 1982 when they were
enthusiastically supported by the invading Israeli army which hoped
that Amin’s brother Bashir would be elected president. Alas, Bashir
turned out to be less pro-Israeli than the then-defence minister,
Ariel Sharon, hoped, and was himself murdered in a bomb attack shortly
before his inauguration.

Old Pierre of Olympics fame is long dead – he did not even know his
own age when I last spoke to him – and Amin’s brother and son were
both assassinated. For the government, there was one electoral light
yesterday: the victory of Mohamed Itani in Beirut, a Sunni Muslim
who scored 85 per cent of the vote for the seat of Walid Eido who
was himself blown up by a bomb in June.

One begins to wonder, in Lebanon, whether the election results are
more surprising than the means by which MPs are liquidated.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress