LEBANON’S CHRISTIANS PLAY ELECTION KINGMAKERS

Middle East Online
May 27 2009

Divided Lebanese Christians to ‘tip the balance’ either in favour of
current majority or for Hezbollah.

ZAHLE, Lebanon – Lebanon’s divided Christians represent the swing
vote in a legislative election in which the Hezbollah is vying to
oust the faction which currently dominates parliament.

"The Christian vote will tip the balance," said Melhem Chaoul,
a sociology professor at the state-run Lebanese University.

Lebanon’s Christians are a minority made up mainly of Catholics,
Maronites, Orthodox and Armenians.

Today, Christians is claimed to make up almost 35 percent of Lebanon’s
four million inhabitants and their political loyalty is deeply divided
between the two camps facing off in the June 7 vote.

One side, ironically identified in Lebanese circles as the "Shiite
Christians," backs the Hezbollah alliance while the so-called "Sunni
Christians" favour the current majority led by Saad Hariri, son of
slain ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

"Lebanon’s Christians have failed to create for themselves a true
force capable of transcending the political divisions in the country,"
Chaoul said.

He was referring to the political crisis that shook Lebanon in the
aftermath of Rafiq Hariri’s murder in 2005 and brought the country
close to civil war last year.

"The Christians didn’t manage to set their own political agenda and
simply follow one side or the other," Chaoul added. "Some campaign
with the Shiites against the Sunnis, and vice versa."

A campaign banner for one of the few independent candidates sums up
the reality on the ground.

"We do not want a Shiite Maronite, we do not want a Sunni Maronite,
we want a true Maronite: Yes to a strong Christian role," it reads.

Thanks to Lebanon’s complex confessional system, Christians can
influence the outcome of the upcoming legislative poll as the 128 seats
in parliament are allocated equally between Christians and Muslims.

For that reason, candidates in a handful of districts will be battling
to win over the Christian vote.

One key battleground, for example, will be the eastern town of Zahle,
a Christian stronghold in the mainly Muslim Bekaa Valley, where five
seats reserved for Christian candidates are up for grabs.

The outcome of the vote for the town’s two other parliamentary seats,
one for a Sunni candidate and another for a Shiite, is already a given.

"If it weren’t for the Christians, there would be no electoral battle,"
said Okab Sakr, a Muslim candidate allied with the majority in Zahle.

The town’s voters, for their part, say they are preparing for a tough
battle to ensure their side wins.

"If Hezbollah wins, we risk another war with Israel," said Elie Hallak,
a 56-year-old teacher. "It already has a lot of power, and if it wins,
it will do what it pleases."

Tamar Apkarian, an Armenian supporter of the Hezbollah-led faction,
disagrees.

"As long as there is no guarantee that Israel will not attack us,
we need Hezbollah’s weapons to defend our country," she said.

Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006
after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly
cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli
prisons. The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap
earlier this year.

The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most
of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli
occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of
Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese
Shabaa Farms.

Israeli flights over Lebanon occur on an almost daily basis and are
in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1710, which in August
2006 ended the war.

With huge public support in the Lebanese south, Hezbollah is poised to
make stronger political gains in the upcoming parliamentary elections
in Lebanon next June.