VOTE-BUYING MAY DECIDE OUTCOME OF JUNE POLLS
By Michael Bluhm

Daily Star
Feb 26 2009
Lebanon

Undecided Christians set to become key swing voters in a tense
electoral battle

BEIRUT: Despite steps toward reconciliation between their regional
allies, Lebanon’s March 14 and March 8 camps remain bitterly divided,
with both camps believing they will prevail in June’s pivotal general
elections among decisive Christian swing voters in a tense campaign
that might well come down to vote-buying, analysts told The Daily
Star on Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Walid Moallem of Syria, which backs the March 8
coalition, arrived in Riyadh on Tuesday to visit March 14 ally King
Abdullah, in the latest sign of warming relations between the two
regional powers after years of antipathy following the February 2005
assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

However, Lebanon’s political antagonists seem unmoved by these displays
of growing regional dŽtente, said Walid Moubarak, director of the
Institute of Diplomacy and Conflict Transformation at the Lebanese
American University (LAU).

"What is taking place outside is having no impact on the inside,"
he said. "If things are moving positively outside, it doesn’t mean
that things would be moving positively inside."

On the contrary, a February 14 demonstration marking the fourth
anniversary of Hariri’s killing ended in the deaths of two men
in politically motivated violence, while Premier Fouad Siniora and
Speaker Nabih Berri have hurled escalating invectives at each other
in recent weeks over the budget for the Council of the South.

Conditioned by more than two years of hostility between the country’s
two major political blocs, almost all top politicians continue to feed
the extreme elements of their electoral bases, even though the election
will apparently be determined by Christian voters in the middle of the
political spectrum, Moubarak added. Because of the ingrained habit of
sectarian voting, only some 30-40 of Parliament’s 128 seats cannot
be called today for either the March 14 or March 8 blocs, with most
of the decisive districts lying in the Christian-majority regions of
Jbeil, Kesrouan, Metn and Zahle, said political analyst Simon Haddad.

With the electoral balance between the camps nearly even, the equally
ingrained local tradition of vote-buying might also play the crucial
role, said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, who teaches political science at LAU
and wrote the 2002 book "Hizbullah: Politics and Religion."

"It really depends, unfortunately, on how much political money is
going to be thrown around," she said. "It’s a battle of vote-buying,
at the end of the day. You have an almost even divide – that’s why
the vote-buying issue becomes so significant."

Election-related money is also partly the root of the spat between
Berri and Siniora, with Berri hoping to shower some of the Council’s
funds on the South Lebanon constituency of his AMAL movement in the
run-up to the polls, Saad-Ghorayeb added.

"That institution has been used by Berri as a form of political
largess," she said, adding that Berri has a bona fide argument in
pushing for council funding on the basis of sectarian parity for Shiite
institutions. "On the other hand, I do think that [sectarian parity]
issue is a legitimate one."

The pre-election "mudslinging" between Berri and Siniora over the
controversy, which has scuttled Cabinet ratification of the 2009
state budget, is tarnishing the standing of both leaders in moderate
voters’ eyes, with Siniora opening himself to accusations of being
little more than an anti-Shiite Sunni politician, said Oussama Safa,
executive director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.

"It’s damaging for both," he said, adding that the contretemps might
represent the "final divorce" between the two long-time rivals. "Now
it’s personal and getting deeper and deeper and more complicated."

In addition to putting the brakes on the 2009 budget, the dispute also
has serious potential constitutional consequences – if the country’s
prime minister and speaker cannot work together, President Michel
Sleiman could find himself confronted by two sets of nominees for all
high offices, such as the perpetually unfilled Constitutional Council,
said Moubarak.

As for Sleiman, he has mostly kept himself mostly above the electoral
fray – he has quashed persistent rumors that he would back a candidate
list unaligned with either major camp, knowing that such a list,
likely filled by Christian candidates, would position him as the
main competition for Change and Reform Bloc leader MP Michel Aoun,
the popular Christian politician and Sleiman’s former commanding
officer in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), Saad-Ghorayeb said.

"That’s not a role he wants to play," she said, adding that Sleiman,
who spent his career in the LAF, has yet to build any sort of voter
constituency. "It would have detracted from his legitimacy as a popular
president. Michel Sleiman has played a very positive role in this."

Meanwhile, Sleiman ally and Metn political boss MP Michel Murr kicked
off the dance of forming electoral coalitions this month, announcing
he would team up with the March 14 Forces’ Phalange Party of former
President Amin Gemayel. Given the background of clashes between
Murr and Aoun in recent months, Murr’s electoral maneuvering stems
primarily from concern for his own continued presence in Parliament
and his son’s ministerial post, rather than as an omen of imminent
March 14 victory, the analysts said.

Murr "knows that if Aoun wins this time, [Murr] wouldn’t have any
role," Haddad said. However, If Murr can lure the area’s Armenians
into siding with his coalition, the results could play a meaningful
factor in the June poll’s outcome, the analysts added. The March 14
strategists also appear to be counting on using the UN Special Tribunal
for Lebanon as a tool to garner electoral support, arguing that only
voting for them will protect the process of bringing Hariri’s killers
to justice, Safa said. However, March 14 has long tied its support
for the tribunal to anti-Syrian rhetoric, and with Syria’s improving
relations with the US and France, as well as with Saudi Arabia,
the potency of the tribunal as a campaign issue might be waning,
Saad-Ghorayeb said.

"All these developments have attenuated any kind of impact the tribunal
could have had in the past," she said.

In addition, the tribunal and its principles have little relevance to
the more immediate concerns that will likely influence voters at the
polls, said Haddad. March 14 would do better to focus instead on the
more prosaic and effective matters of forming advantageous electoral
coalitions, such as in Tripoli, where Sunni support appears less than
monolithic for parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri’s Future
Movement, he added.

Although the elections are too close to call, the analysts
were unanimous in saying they feared more violence as the vote
approaches. The two deaths on February 14 stemmed directly from the
electoral fever, and the situation throughout the country remains
volatile, they said.

February 14 "has brought the ugly truth to the surface," Safa
said. "These incidents are happening on almost a daily basis. This
is the reality – people are highly mobilized."