Results Are In

There's something strangely calming about the democratic process even when you're not completely satisfied with the results. And as political pundits all around the world were discussing the scope and effect of a Hezbollah win, the Lebanese were busy voting for the March 14 coalition. This means that, as bad as the last four years were in terms of security and economy, the Lebanese seem to think it's still better than the alternative. What the alternative is, no one really knows, and no one will know for the time being. Some think it's an Islamic republic where women are forced to wear chadors, others think it's a utopia of progress, transparency, strength and stability. Both are probably wrong, and I think the alternative is much closer to the current reality than our politicians on both sides would want us to think.

But let's not dwell on what could have been, and focus on what is and what will be. So March 14 won the election again with somewhere around 70 seats in the 128 seat parliament. That's a healthy majority (more than the slim majority the Hezbollah camp were expected to win, and similar to the one March 14 won four years ago), but it doesn't change much in the composition of the previous parliament. So I don't see much change coming to Lebanon. The petty political haggling over cabinet seats will continue, the parliament will not regain it's full constitutional role and will still be chaperoned by the national dialogue table.

To be honest, I'm not too worried about the future. With Obama at the helm of the West, the 14 Marchers will not be encouraged or pressured into an aggressive stance against Hezbollah as they were under the Bush administration. And hopefully, if Ahmedinejad loses elections on Friday, Iran's stance would be moderated as well, and that will certainly have a positive influence of Lebanese political stability.

Add to that the benefit of taking away Israel's excuse of treating Lebanon as a "terrorist state" under a Hezbollah-led government, I'd say all in all the election result has a pretty thick silver lining...

My only regret is that my curiousity has not been satisfied. It's easy supporting the opposition when you've never seen them in power, and I was looking forward to see how both sides would act in a new balance of paliamentary power. Would March 14 have made a more responsible opposition? And would Hezbollah and Aoun have remained as keen on national unity and dialogue and fighting corruption as they were the past three years? Well I guess we won't find out before at least another 4 years.

Until then, we have a couple of weeks of intense political bickering to look forward to as the next government is formed... Keeping in mind that the government that comes out of the new parliament gets a complete four-year term, I wouldn't bet on a tension-free process considering also how hard it was to agree on the previous government even when it only had a nine-month mandate.

One last thought... The March 14 and Hezbollah-FPM alliances aren't immune to the changes in the international and regional political climates, and some changes in the makeup of these blocs should not be ruled out.

Foreign Interference

While the Lebanese are planning their next elections, due to take place in less than two weeks, the rest of the world seems to be doing their best to make sure the elections go according to their interests. With the elections so close, this might not be such a difficult task. Most observers seem to be predicting an advantage for the Hezbollah - FPM alliance at the expense of the March 14 alliance (and by "most observers" I mean CNN and BBC). So it's not surprising to see US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton making a surprise visit to Beirut to declare the US's commitment to a democratic and free Lebanon and to insist on the importance of preventing foreign interference in the Lebanese elections followed ironically by Joe Biden's vist to Beirut (the first ever by a sitting US Vice-President) in which he said, “We will evaluate the shape of our assistance programs based on the shape of the new government." At the same time Israeli officials keep reminding the Lebanese that Lebanon will pay severely for voting in a Hezbollah-led government, with Ehud Barak recently saying, "If Hizbullah wins the elections with a large margin, Lebanon will expose itself to the might of the Israeli army more than any time in the past." I don't know about you but I think there's little else that foreign nations can do to influence elections than using threats of military force along with promise of economic aid.

And in the face of the American-Israeli "carrot and stick," the Iranians and Syrians need to do very little in order to influence the result of the elections in their favour. In fact, they actually need to do as little as possible (publicly of course). By keeping a low profile, they give their Hezbollah allies the ability to show the (admittedly naive) Lebanese that their side is getting little foreign support in the face of the blatant intervention by Israel and the US in favor of the March 14 alliance. So they probably stick to the common practice of (secretly) funneling cash into the campaigns of their allies all the while pointing out the importance of Lebanese elections free from outside influence.