Lebanon's ruling coalition claims election victory over Hezbollah

The Guardian
June 8, 2009
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/lebanon-election-hezbollah-hariri

By Hugh Macleod
Beirut

In a boost to Western policy in one of the region’s strategically vital countries Lebanon’s US-backed ruling coalition claimed a decisive election victory last night in a dramatic reversal of fortunes after polls showed it losing its slim majority to a Hezbollah-led coalition, backed by Syria and Iran.

Fireworks streamed from the Beirut home of Saad Hariri, leader of the governing coalition and the top Sunni politician who is now expected to become prime minister, filling the post held five times by his father, whose assassination in 2005 triggered a prolonged crisis.

“We extend our hand to work together seriously and in earnest for the sake of Lebanon […] to build a strong and sovereign state,” Hariri told supporters in the early hours of the morning. “Long live democracy.”

Appearing to concede defeat, Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah told the Hezbollah-run Al Manar television: “Whatever the results are it won’t change the sensitive equilibrium. Lebanon’s only choice is consensus.”

Ziad Baroud, the interior minister, said official results would be announced early today, but supporters of the ruling coalition known as March 14 took to the streets of Beirut, blaring car horns and flying party colours. Local media reported that with 80 percent of the votes counted March 14, which won elections in 2005 campaigning on opposition to Syria who they blame for Rafik Hariri’s assassination, had a slim lead over the Syrian-backed opposition.

All day voters queued patiently outside polling booths, many for several hours, watched over by 50,000 soldiers and police in what monitors said was Lebanon’s freest and fairest parliamentary election to date.

Isolated voting booths, indelible ink and a voter education campaign launched by the interior ministry made the elections a significant improvement on 2005, with turnout averaging more than 50%.

The elections pitted a moderate Sunni-led government, supported by the west, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, against an opposition led by Hezbollah, the Middle East’s most powerful militant group, which fought Israel in a devastating war in 2006 and is financed by the Shia government of Iran. As such, the election fed into the sectarian strife that swept the region after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, with Sunni countries fearing the rise of Shia power.

Iran elects a president on Friday and fears about growing Iranian influence were evident in some Lebanese voters. “My main concern is for the army to be the only ones to carry arms. Hezbollah doesn’t have a Lebanese project,” said Georges Abdo, a Christian hairdresser who voted for the current ruling coalition.

Those fears were dismissed by voters supporting the Hezbollah-led coalition. “We don’t listen to everything Hezbollah says,” said Harout Vartanian, a 30-year-old Armenian kung-fu champion who said he was voting with the opposition in order to secure his community representation in cabinet.

There were widespread reports of vote-buying before the poll, with some Lebanese expatriates being offered free air tickets home. Though voting passed off largely without violent incidents, tensions in the capital and the battleground Christian towns remained high, with the army imposing a midnight curfew on the capital.

“Democracy is a blessing we must preserve, a blessing that distinguishes Lebanon in the Middle East,” said President Michel Suleiman after voting in his home town of Amchit, north of Beirut. He urged Lebanese to vote “calmly and with joy”.
With Sunnis largely aligned with the incumbent government coalition and Shias solidly behind the Hezbollah-led opposition, Christians, nearly 40% of Lebanon’s 3.26 million eligible voters, provide the crucial swing vote.

Christian leader Michel Aoun redrew the political map of Lebanon in 2005 when he forged an unlikely alliance with Hezbollah, weathering fierce criticism from opponents that he had made a U-turn on his opposition to Damascus. Aoun’s party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) could have delivered victory to Hezbollah’s coalition if it had gained 10 extra seats in the 128-member parliament, which is divided equally between Muslims and Christians. The FPM defends its alliance with Hezbollah as helping to stabilise Lebanon rather than give Hezbollah a platform for renewed conflict with Israel.

“If the west wants to make serious negotiations with Islamist groups like Hezbollah then the FPM has set a precedent,” Ziad Abs, who negotiated the FPM’s alliance with Hezbollah, told the Guardian. “The main threat to us is from Israel. There can be no stability in Lebanon without peace in the region.”

While the US continues to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, Barack Obama has offered dialogue with Iran and is sending his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to the region this week to work on an Arab-Israeli peace deal, with a visit to Damascus expected. In a break with US policy, Britain announced in March that it would re-establish contact with Hezbollah politicians, making a distinction between the group’s armed wing and its politics that Hezbollah itself does not make. No direct talks have yet taken place.