THE BILLIONAIRE WHO BEAT HEZBOLLAH

Forbes
/hariri-lebanon-march-face-markets-hezbollah.html
June 8 2009

Tycoon Saad Hariri’s anti-Syrian bloc wins after an election campaign
greased with money and fear.

LONDON — If George W. Bush had still been President of the United
States, he no doubt would have trumpeted the Lebanese elections on
Sunday as a triumph for democracy and Western values, despite the clear
sectarian divides still scarring the country. Instead, the task fell
to Saad Hariri–the Sunni Muslim billionaire whose carefully-groomed
facial hair betrays his Saudi upbringing–to try and paint the victory
of his anti-Syrian electoral bloc as moderation’s defeat of extremism.

"Democracy won today," said Hariri, in a victory speech overnight,
"and the bigger winner is Lebanon." His father, Rafik Hariri, whose
sprawling business empire and Oger conglomerate led him to be known as
"Mr. Lebanon," was assassinated in a car-bomb attack in 2005. Since
then, the Saudi-born Saad has personified resistance to Syrian and
Iranian intervention in Lebanon, heading the so-called "March 14"
alliance alongside various Christian, Druze and Armenian parties,
named after the date when massive protests over Rafik Hariri’s murder
pushed Syrian troops to withdraw from the country.

Judging by this election, it takes fear and money to promote democracy
in Lebanon. Government supporters feared that the Shia Muslim militant
group Hezbollah, seen as an armed puppet of its backers in Syria
and Iran, would win a parliamentary majority with its own allies
and spark a national crisis. The Hariri bloc knew how to exploit
this fear on the campaign trail when it claimed that a victory for
the Hezbollah-led opposition would lead to a tripartite sharing of
government and administrative posts between Shia Muslims, Sunni
Muslims and Christians. They are currently only shared two ways,
between Muslims and Christians.

A related fear was also how the international community would react to
a Hezbollah victory. American Vice-President Joe Biden visited Lebanon
last month to say in no uncertain terms that a Hezbollah-led government
should not expect American aid to flow as freely as before. U.S. ally
Saudi Arabia is also a strong financial backer of Lebanon, supporting
Sunni interests in the deeply-fragmented country. And although Israel
failed to bomb Hezbollah out of existence in the 2006 Lebanon War,
an electoral victory for the Shia group might heighten the chances
of another conflict.

Then there was money. Cash came in handy when flying Lebanese
expatriates into the country to cast their vote on Sunday, a tactic
which all sides reportedly dabbled in. Tales abound of parties buying
$700 plane tickets for citizens abroad, with Iran, Syria and rival
Saudi Arabia reported to be contributing to a $1 billion travel pot in
total splashed across the country. Evidently March 14 still managed to
tip the balance in this arena, with Hezbollah’s main Christian ally,
Michel Aoun, failing to tear crucial votes away from Christian allies
of Hariri like the right-wing Phalangists.

It would be unfair to see this as a stolen election, however. Hezbollah
clearly did not do itself any favors by talking up its achievements
of May 2008, when it turned its guns inwards for the first
time and stormed Sunni neighborhoods to extract veto power from
the government. Nor did it cut a convincing figure as a party
of establishment politics rather than pugnacious opposition,
particularly at a time when Lebanon and Syria are finally moving
towards a rapprochement and when Lebanon’s crippling public debt
requires a healthy dose of stability.

So what next for Saad Hariri and his victorious movement? IHS
Global Insight analyst Gala Riani thinks that he and March 14 will
have the upper hand in negotiating a new coalition government with
Hezbollah–a necessary evil considering March 14 won just 71 seats
out of the 128-seat parliament. Talks could see Hezbollah stripped
of some of the extra powers it wrestled out of the government last
year, such as the blocking minority in the cabinet for it and its
allies. Hariri could even end up as prime minister, even though he
does not seem eager to take on the role of government head.

One thing looks certain: Lebanon’s ever-shifting political alliances
will not stay fixed for long. "There is scope for unexpected
alliances," said Riani, "and not for the first time."