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.

The March 14 Prophecy

There's a funny story we used to tell about March 14 supporters who, in the days leading to March 14, seemed to have forgotten that they weren't alone in the country. So much so, that on March 8, one soon-to-be March 14er told a reporter, "I don't know why they did that, we were all united before they showed up."

This "March 14 equals Lebanon" formula was not just a passing theme. It had become a fundamental part of internal and regional Lebanese politics over the next four years, referring to the year-long opposition sit-in in downtown Beirut as an "occupation," continually using the mantra "state within a state," and culminating in July 2006 when Fouad Sanioura accepted then US Secretary of State Condalezza Rice's full support for Lebanon at the same time that her administration and congress was handing Israel extra fuel and munitions to bomb the non-March-14-friendly South of Lebanon. Today, this 'foreignization' of the opposition can be seen in March 14's electoral campaign: "Vote for Lebanon." It's leaders' political speech includes such brilliant statements as "If March 8 wins, then Lebanon will be ruled from Damascus's countryside."

This mentality, which had become so prevalent in March 14 speech that I have come to believe it runs far deeper than mere tactical political smearing, is my primary issue with March 14. The fundamentally hypocritical monopolization of Lebanese identity by a group of parties that represent half of Lebanon and whose founding principles were those of unity and coexistence stood in stark contrast with everything I believe in as a Lebanese. This pushed me so far away from this political group that I felt a sense of belonging among the citizens of "Non-Lebanese" Lebanon.

Enter Hassan Nasrallah.

Since May 7, 2008, I had been rationalizing how the events of that day were a tragic yet inevitable result of an extreme political climate coupled with an irresponsible government decision. I had convinced myself that Hezbollah was cornered and had little other choice. Of course though some details of the events are unforgivable (such as the burning down of Future TV headquarters), the event itself seemed like a heavy price paid by Lebanon for an overdue wake-up call. I believed, and still do, that Lebanon needed to simply pick up the pieces and move forward.

And that it did. The coming months saw the best political climate Lebanon has seen since before February 14th 2005. The Doha accords, the election of a president, the new government and the new electoral law all gave me a little hope. Yet I never went as far as saying that all this was a direct result of May 7, not because I didn't believe so, but probably because I refused to attribute these positive developments to such a negative event.

Yesterday, during a graduation ceremony in Beirut's southern suburb, Nasrallah said, "I tell the Lebanese, in particular Sunnis and Shiites, that the May 7 events put an end to war in Beirut. The May 7 events safeguarded Lebanon's institutions and forced all Lebanese parties to go back to the dialogue, which led to the election of President Michel Sleiman."

So, unlike me, Nasrallah does not seem to have that problem in admitting that these events are directly responsible for the seemingly positive events that followed. And though I had often hoped Nasrallah would apologize to those he had wronged on that day in order to heal the wound upon which recent stability was built, I half-heartedly understood his inability to do so (I say inability because I also managed to convince myself that he actually wanted to apologize but couldn't). So imagine how I felt when he went and declared yesterday, "that May 7 was a glorious day in the history of the resistance."

A glorious day? Really??

May 25 is a glorious day for Lebanon. I also accepted, despite the death and destruction, that August 14 was as a glorious day... May 7, 2008 was certainly NOT a glorious day for Lebanon and if Mr. Nasrallah thinks that doesn't disqualify it from being a glorious day for the resistance... It makes me wonder...

Has The Resistance become so removed from Lebanon that its glorious days now include a day that saw death, destruction and widespread fear in Lebanon's capital, inflicted directly by the Resistance itself? How can The Resistance, whose promise of never using its arms against its own citizens still forms the basis for its legitimacy, remember as "glorious" a day in which it did just that? Or were the sunni citizens of Beirut and supporter's of Mustaqbal, no longer citizens of Lebanon, the country Hezbollah vowed to protect?

Maybe Nasrallah just joined the ranks of dividers and foreignizers, those who see the "other Lebanon" as another country altogether. Or maybe it was always the case but I was was unable to see it, and it that case, wouldn't that mean that maybe, just maybe, March 14 had actually gotten something right after all?...

Will We Have Elections Next Year?

So March 14, after a long meeting yesterday, declared a set of principles that will likely govern their policy in the coming days. Among them were many significant statements about the importance of civil peace and coexistence, and about the need to eliminate the different paranoia each community suffers from. But it wouldn't be fun to focus on the stuff I agree with, instead I'd rather focus on those principles I have a problem with, namely:

• "Any solution to the current crisis should lead to eliminating Hezbollah's arms from the internal equation."
• "Resorting to parliamentary elections in order to decide controversial issues is difficult given the possession of weapons by one team and not the other, and in light of the experience of previous elections in which the losing team refused to acknowledge the results by virtue of its arms. "
  (Source (in Arabic): Naharnet)

These principles scare me. Not because they're faulty, but because they're dangerous. I do believe, like any March 14 supporter, that Hezbollah needs to let go of its weapons. I also believe, like any Hezbollah supporter, that now is not the time. I agree with March 14 that we need a strong corruption-free state that has a monopoly on executive, legislative, judiciary and military powers. But I also believe that a strong state is a prerequisite (or at least a co-requisite) of the disarmament of Hezbollah and not the other way around.

The main reason why these principles scare me is that we seem to be headed to a new crisis, one in which parliamentary elections are delayed until an agreement is reached on the status of Hezbollah's weapons. And if our politicians can't agree on the supposedly simple matter of writing the government platform and barring any sudden changes in the regional and international arena, how exactly are they going to settle the matter of Hezbollah's weapons?

There is also a logical flaw in the March 14 principles: Given their assumptions and their stated objectives, their principles lead to a contradiction. In particular:

• Their assumption that Hezbollah could use its weapons in order to prevent election results that are favorable to its opponents.
• Their objective of building a strong independent peaceful and economically viable state.
• Their principle that Hezbollah needs to be disarmed before parliamentary elections.

Here's why these don't fit: according to the assumption, Hezbollah will indeed use its arms to prevent losing in parliamentary elections. But surely that means they will also use their arms to prevent their disarmament (an assumption Nasrallah himself admits - Video 7:46 (in arabic))? And in that case, if March 14's assumption is true and they stick to their principles, then they are leading us straight into one of two options: a devastating civil and regional war aimed at disarming Hezbollah by force or an indefinite halt to our most basic constitutional institution, the parliament. Both of these outcomes seem to contradict March 14's stated objective. QED.