INTERNATIONAL PRESSURES AND INTERNAL DIVISIONS MARK LEBANON’S ELECTIONS
Paul Dakiki

Asia News
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June 4 2009
Italy

Two groupings are trying to win: the March 14 alliance backed by
the West and Sunni Arab countries and the March 8 coalition backed by
Syria and Iran. Whichever side wins, the impact will be felt across the
Middle East. At the same time, both groupings lack internal coherence.

Beirut (AsiaNews) – Lebanon’s elections are hard to figure out even
if their results are not likely to change matters that much. Two
alliances are competing for the 128 seats of the National Assembly,
each respectively called ‘March 14’ and ‘March 8’.

Saad Hariri, son of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri who was
assassinated in 2005, heads the outgoing parliamentary majority, which
is made up of Sunni-based ‘Future Movement’, Druze-centred Progressive
Socialist Party and a few Christian parties, most notably the Lebanese
Forces (Phalange). The March 8 group is instead constituted by two Shia
parties, Hizbollah and Amal, and the Christians of Michel Aoun’s Free
Patriotic Movement. Both groups also include other smaller parties.

The March 14 group is pro-Western and is backed by the United States
and France as well as Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia. It
is Lebanon-centric in relations to international (United Nations)
decisions like the presence of international peace-keeping troops
along the border with Israel, the disarmament of domestic militias and
the international tribunal investigating a recent wave of political
murders in the country, including that of Rafik Hariri.

Leading the race according to some public opinion polls, the March 8
coalition is backed by Iran and Syria. Its goal is to reinforce and
harden the so-called anti-Israeli resistance and all the groups like
Hamas who oppose peace with the Jewish State.

Hizbollah, which dominates the group, is opposed to disarming its
militias and is certainly not in favour of an international tribunal
that might prove what many believe, namely that the order to kill
Hariri came from Damascus.

Given all the international attention Lebanon’s election is certainly
not an exclusively domestic affair.

In fact a victory by the Mach 14 alliance is likely to bring support
and financial aid from the West and Sunni Arab nations. This in turn
would increase US President Obama’s margin in the region, strengthening
the camp in favour of an Arab-Israeli peace deal.

Conversely, if Hizbollah wins and forms a government, Iran’s presence
in the Middle East would be enhanced, spelling trouble for US Mideast
diplomacy.

It is no accident that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated
that a victory by the March 8 alliance would strengthen the resistance
and change the situation in the region.

But that is not all. If Hizbollah does win, Israeli Defence Minister
Ehud Barak said that Israel would feel free to take any action that it
felt appropriate as it did in July 2006 (when it went to war against
the Shia movement).

Similarly, in his visit to Lebanon during which he met March 14
leaders, US Vice President Joe Biden said that a Hizbollah victory
would lead the United States to re-evaluate its assistance plans
to Lebanon

Hizbollah is well-aware of that and quite concerned because it could
spell disaster for the country’s economic development. For this reason
it insisted that in case of victory it would seek a government of
national unity, an option Hariri has already dismissed.

After all is said and done international interests and pressures
have but a limited hold on the country. Under Lebanon’s electoral
law the electorate is split according to religious affiliation. This
means that the results are by and large already known. At best 20
out of 128 seats are up for grabs and cold tip the balance one way
or the other. This makes the country’s 160,000 Armenian Christians,
officially aligned with the March 8 grouping, very important.

Irrespective of who wins on Sunday, things will be tough for the
winner since neither camp is internally well united.

In the March 14 alliance Walid Jumblatt represents a walking time bomb
ready to go off. The Druze leader has in fact a habit of switching
sides as he has done in the past. Until recently he took a hard-line
stance against Syria and its Lebanese allies, but now seems to be
more open to Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

For its part the March 8 alliance has a Christian "problem" because
those who joined the alliance with Hizbollah jumping on the bandwagon
of Michel Aoun (who was Syria’s main enemy during the civil war)
are in it for tactical reasons and remain highly apprehensive about
the party of God’s military might.