Nerve-jangling change is coming

Lebanon

Jun 9th 2005 BEIRUT
From The Economist print edition

Lebanon's four-stage elections should produce a better parliament

FREEDOM! Independence! Sovereignty! Lebanon would seem to have won the things its chanting throngs demanded this spring. Syria's troops are gone, the press is unshackled, and the freest elections in a generation are under way. But to many Lebanese the cup still looks only half full, and still leaves a bitter aftertaste.

In a region devoid of real parliaments, Lebanon's voting system does look pretty fair, considering the complexity of the country's sectarian patchwork—and given that the last census was in 1932. Voters choose a number of candidates, each of whom represents a religious sect in rough proportion to the sectarian make-up of their district. The trouble is that the law effectively reinforces the sectarian clientilism that many liberal Lebanese see as the source of their country's problems.

Polling in southern Lebanon, in the second of four regional rounds, ended on June 5th. Single electoral slates swept both rounds, returning essentially the same factions that carried the same districts five years ago, during the bad old days under Syrian tutelage. In Beirut, the list named by Saad Hariri, son and political heir to the mega-rich and popular prime minister, Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in February, was so sure to win that two-thirds of voters stayed at home.
The tally was better in the south, but whereas turnout in Shia areas averaged around 50%, it was less than a quarter in Christian towns. Since Shias make up two-thirds of the region's population, a landslide for lists picked by the two dominant and allied Shia parties, Hizbullah and Amal, was certain. Many Christians felt that to vote was to endorse a system that strips them of what they see as their right to choose their own (ie, Christian) MPs.

Of course, Muslims in mainly Christian areas, such as some of those that will vote in the next two weeks, feel just as disgruntled. But a particular difficulty for Christians in the south is that Hizbullah, unlike Christian parties in the north that were de-clawed at the end of the civil war 15 years ago, keeps a potent, heavily armed militia. These guerrillas are, says Hizbullah, a deterrent against Israel, which occupied parts of the south for 22 years. But Israel withdrew five years ago. Most Lebanese, not just Christians, worry about the militia's trouble-making potential nearly as much as they fear their powerful neighbour.

Hizbullah's strong electoral showing presages a continued struggle over the arms issue. The UN Security Council has resolved that it must disarm, but the party's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, says his party would “sever the hand” of anyone who reached for its guns, let alone for the 12,000 rockets it claims to point at Israel.

Inside Lebanon, Hizbullah has usually acted with more discipline and decorum than other political players. In this electoral season, frenzied horse-trading has created some unholy alliances, and what many see as a wholesale sacrifice of principle for maslah (self-interest). “They don't even bother to talk about issues,” says an engineering student who says he now regrets having marched for independence two months ago, when national outrage led to the Syrians' recent withdrawal. “It's just the same old tribal, feudal bazaar we've always suffered from.”

Leaders of all stripes have lately taken to calling each other whores, dwarves and traitors, among other things. But some actors prefer to settle scores by other means. Last week's murder of Samir Qassir, Lebanon's best-known columnist, was a particular shock, despite Lebanon's bloody past. Mr Qassir took an uncommonly sanguine view of Arab affairs. An ardent foe of sectarianism, he was an early, trenchant and courageous critic of Syria and of Lebanon's own Syrian-backed intelligence apparatus. His recent writings suggested that Syrians should emulate Lebanon's revolution, and that it was time for Hizbullah to drop its “resistance” posturing and stick to being a normal political party.

The targeting of someone who was not a politician, in the heart of Christian East Beirut, sent a chilling message. Did it mean, perhaps, that Syria's allies intended to take belated vengeance—or were drawing a bloody “red line”, defining a limit to tolerance of criticism? Or worse yet, was the killing a sign that Syria or its Lebanese friends still plan a comeback, picking off their enemies one by one? In any event, many Lebanese intellectuals, who felt they were at last reclaiming a space for civilised debate, are thinking again of leaving the country, as so many have done in the past.

Still, despite Lebanon's understandably gloomy mood, it is clear that the elections, however tainted, will produce real change. Even the old faces being returned to parliament are singing a new tune: many promise, as a matter of the first order, to change the electoral system.

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.