STABILITY IS INJUSTICE:

Opposition has edge in Lebanon vote (Hassan M. Fattah, August 5, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

Lebanon's fragile stability was jolted Sunday by a hotly contested parliamentary election in an important Christian district where a little-known opposition candidate claimed victory. If the claim is verified, it would be a major blow to Lebanon's governing Western-backed coalition, which has been engaged in an intense power struggle with an alliance of opponents for months.

Unofficial results indicated that the opposition candidate, Kamil Khoury, who represents the Free Patriotic Movement, led by the Maronite Christian leader General Michel Aoun, had won a seat left vacant by the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a Parliament member, last November. [...]

If Khoury is declared the winner, Aoun's own political prospects would be greatly enhanced and it would strengthen his drive to bring down the government, which has been resisting demands from an alliance of Aoun, the militant organization Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon for more power.

The whole point of their system is to thwart democracy lest the Shi'a gain their rightful share of power.

MORE:
Washington in Lebanon and Palestine: fatal manipulation: The United States's efforts to undermine Hamas and Hizbollah are part of a divisive, unprincipled and dangerous middle-east strategy (Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, 6 - 08 - 2007, OpenDemocracy)

Lebanon and Palestine combine democratic traditions with the experience of having seen resistance groups, inimical to US and Israeli interests, sweep to or close to power. The Bush administration, accordingly, has abandoned all pretence at democracy-promotion there and engaged in stark de-democratisation of Palestine and Lebanon. The measures the US has used (to be elaborated below) to shake the foundations of democracy and the internal stability of these nations include undermining their national unity, infringing on their sovereignty, refusing to recognise the popular will, and attempting to mask their government's loss of popular and constitutional legitimacy: in short, promoting failed states rather than encouraging state-building.

This enterprise has been intensified since the victory of Hizbollah over Israel in the war of July-August 2006, and Hamas's routing of Fatah in Gaza in June 2007. Both events propelled the Bush administration to scramble for ways to support Fouad Siniora (Lebanon's prime minister) and Mahmoud Abbas (Palestine's president) against their rivals. In contrast to its "moderate" Arab friends of an autocratic mould, with whom the US seeks partnership at a state level - Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia - the US's support for its allies in Lebanon and Palestine is defined through particular leaders and/ or factions, not nationwide institutional entities.

But by thus taking sides, Washington engages in the dangerous exercise of falsely presenting political factions - which do not represent true popular majorities, far less overwhelming ones - as truly national forces. In fact, the US's declared intent to "prop" and "boost" Abbas and Siniora indicates its acknowledgment of widespread internal popular discontent with their regimes. Washington's obfuscation here obscures the fact that had it not been for Hamas's and Hizbollah's alliances with these forces in the past, the latter would not have been able to come to dominate state structures.

For its part, Hamas - motivated by the imperative of lifting US-led international sanctions on the Palestinian people and ending the Fatah leadership's military-security campaign to unseat it after its electoral win in January 2006 - formed a national unity government with Fatah, under the Mecca agreement of February 2007. The Palestinian president (and Fatah leader) Mahmoud Abbas used this foothold in government to concentrate power - security and financial prerogatives, as well as key policy-making - in the office of the president its associated bodies; this effectively emasculated Hamas and reduced its rightful leadership of the government to a purely cosmetic one.

In a similar vein, Hizbollah struck an electoral alliance (the so-called "quartet agreement") with Fouad Siniora's March 14 camp in the 2005 parliamentary elections, in exchange for the latter's pledge to support and legitimise its resistance; this was indeed later enshrined in a cabinet policy statement. As a result of this alliance, the March 14 forces won twelve additional seats in parliament, giving them the parliamentary majority they enjoy today. Thus, while the political bloc to which Siniora belongs has a political majority, the opposition camp of which Hizbollah is part constitutes the popular majority which would almost certainly be translated into a parliamentary majority should early elections be held.

But these political and electoral compromises have cost Hamas and Hizbollah dearly, as both Abbas and Siniora used the political power their factions were afforded to overturn the respective basis of agreement.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 5, 2007 10:03 PM