It looks as if Syria will have yet another headache: a landside victory in Lebanon of candidates led by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s son in the final round of parliamentary elections.
This final stage in the elections, staggered over four weekends, means the anti-Syrian opposition will have a much bigger voice in modern Lebanon. CNN reports:
Candidates led by the son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri were projected to win a solid victory in Lebanon’s final round of parliamentary elections Sunday, but official results were not expected until Monday, a Hariri aide said.
The national poll, staggered by region over four weekends, is Lebanon’s first ballot free of Syrian domination in almost three decades. Syria pulled out its forces in April.
Saad Hariri’s electoral list, a coalition composed of candidates opposed to neighboring Syria’s longtime influence over Lebanon, swept the first round of elections in late May.
Spokeswoman Amal Moudalali said Hariri would await the official results before making a statement about Sunday’s results.
“We are not yet claiming victory. We are still waiting,” she said. “But we are ahead in the polls, and we think we are going to win.”
In the fourth and last round of Lebanon’s general election, voters in the north went to the polls to decide which candidates get the last 28 of 128 parliamentary seats up for grabs.
Reuters writes that the depth of this victory gives the opposition ” clear mandate to steer Lebanon out of Syria’s shadow.” Reuters also notes:
The victory means the 128-seat assembly has an anti-Syrian majority for the first time since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Pro-Syrian Christian former minister Suleiman Franjieh conceded he and his candidates were heading for defeat in the mainly Sunni Muslim north, though they had done well in Christian areas.
“What we feared is happening. I think the north has been divided along sectarian lines,” Franjieh told LBC television station. “We have arrived at what we used to warn against.”
The anti-Syrian list squared off against an unlikely alliance of pro-Syrians and Damascus’ erstwhile foe, former general Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian. Aoun’s victory in the Christian heartland of Mount Lebanon in last week’s round stunned the disparate movement whose street protests following Hariri’s assassination on Feb. 14 forced Syria to bow to global pressure and pull out of Lebanon.
Hariri’s bloc has now won 72 seats, an absolute majority, but still a far cry from the two-thirds the anti-Syrian front had predicted.
Hariri is now potentially a candidate for Prime Minister…but he isn’t commenting on that (not yet). Arab News:
The outcome would give Hariri, a 35-year-old businessman turned politician, the opportunity to become prime minister, following in the footsteps of his slain father who held the post five times.
But it would fall short of the two-thirds majority required to change the constitution to cut short the term of under-fire pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who has more than two years in office after a controversial Damascus-inspired extension last September.
The four-round elections, which kicked off on May 29, were the first since neighboring Syria ended its three-decade troop presence in April amid the political turmoil that followed the February assassination of Hariri.
England’s Telegraph adds this:
“We are heading for a landslide in north Lebanon,” said a source at Saad al-Hariri’s Future movement. “We’ll easily get the 21 seats necessary.” There was no official confirmation….
Aoun’s victory in the Christian heartland of Mount Lebanon in last week’s round shocked the disparate opposition, whose street protests after Rafik Hariri’s assassination in a bombing on Feb 14 forced Syria to bow to global pressure and pull out of Lebanon.
But if the opposition has won in the north, a region which has been home to some of Syria’s strongest allies, Saad Hariri is almost certain to follow his father in becoming prime minister….
Given Lebanon’s complex sectarian electoral system, where voters choose from different candidates on rival lists in multi-member constituencies, some analysts are predicting that no bloc will win a clear majority.
If so, days of difficult deal-making will ensue before a new government can be formed.
In other words: the drama is ending… The drama is beginning…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.