Out of Gas
BEIRUT—It has become something of a maxim that elections in the Middle East, when they are free and fair, generally tend to disfavor U.S. designs for them. In Lebanon, at least, this appeared not to be the case since the election in 2005 of a pro-U.S. majority, known as the March 14 alliance. That particular contest, however, was built on a wave of enthusiasm and deft diplomacy following what the State Department dubbed the “Cedar Revolution,” i.e., Syria’s forced withdrawal from its tiny neighbor following the Valentine’s Day assassination of the Sunni ex-Premier, Rafik Hariri. It was also built, perhaps even more importantly, on the backs of some of Washington’s supposedly worst enemies: primarily the militant Shi’ite party Hezbollah, which delivered enough votes to March 14 to allow it to form a government and hold a slim majority in the country’s 128-member Parliament.
Four years and two wars on, however, a great deal has changed. March 14 is now ostensibly on life support, desperately trying to come to terms with a changing international scene that seeks engagement with Syria and Iran, a U.S. government that still refuses to deliver on March 14’s key electoral promises, and the most surprising aspect of all: the enduring political alliance between the single most popular and best organized Christian party in the country, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) led by General Michel Aoun, and Hezbollah.
Although electioneering has only recently begun, the minority coalition—which includes Armenians, the other main Shiite party, AMAL, as well as small Sunni, Druze and Christian factions—appears well positioned to gain what will likely be a majority of only a few seats in the next four-year Parliament. Key to the minority’s early advantage in the relatively small number of Christian battleground districts is its greater coherency as a unified political actor and its superior ability to mobilize constituencies, especially as voter turnout along sectarian lines is expected to be decisive in most of the contested districts.
Both of these aspects were on display recently with March 14’s thinly veiled encouragement of “neutral” or “independent” candidates. Given the continued strength of Aoun, as well as the demonstrated ability of his allies to turn out supporters, March 14 clearly now believes that its best chance of winning battleground seats is to tap into the popularity of the independent Maronite president, Michel Suleiman, rather than rely on its own “brand.”
But that strategy is vulnerable on at least two fronts. First, Suleiman himself has made it clear that he has no interest in electioneering on behalf of others. And without the president’s expenditure of his political capital, it remains entirely unclear whether any purported neutral candidate could beat the FPM list or stymie efforts already under way to paint such figures as a kind of “March 14 lite.”
Second, although March 14 is in the process of designing its list and ironing out thorny internal conflicts over seats, it may prove difficult to avoid three-way races where a March 14 candidate undercuts the full import of a neutral candidate, to the benefit of the FPM.
Even if the strategy of relying on neutrals progresses under ideal circumstances, March 14 faces two deeper problems: its continuing lack of organizational depth and competency and a further degradation of its appeal, as its core ideology slowly atrophies.
At the most basic level, as the August 2007 by-election in the Christian battleground of Metn demonstrated (the seat was won by a relatively unknown FPM candidate over a leading March 14 figure, Amine Gemayel), the decades-old machinery of voter turnout employed by key parties within the majority is woefully inadequate when up against the modern campaign methods of the FPM and some of its allies. But in the almost two years since that seminal loss, March 14 has apparently not learned this lesson. According to U.S. and European election experts, it is still intent on activating its supporters through traditional means. This should prove especially problematic in June since, unlike past elections held over several weeks, the contest this time will be held on only one day, with agility, communication and voter enthusiasm more critical than ever.
More significantly, March 14’s ideological approach increasingly appears anachronistic when measured against domestic and international trends. Foremost in this regard is its continued rhetorical focus on Hezbollah’s arms and the hard line it promotes on all things related to Syria. Given the raft of cordial and arguably productive visits to Damascus by key Lebanese figures, including the President, the head of the Army and Interior ministry and more recently the March 14-allied Defense Minister, Elias Murr, this stance seems more focused on appealing to its base than attracting the swing voters, especially Christians, who will be of prime importance come June.
In this, of course, international events are also working against March 14, as the United States and the international community move towards direct engagement and, in some cases, rapprochement, with the Assad regime. Apparently unable to adapt to this new reality, the March 14 alliance continues to fight the clear-cut battles of 2005 rather than the more nuanced and tactically challenging post-Bush praxis.
The “new” March 14 emphasis on setting up the election as a kind of binding referendum on Hezbollah’s arms can also be viewed through this prism. With an Obama administration warming up to both Iran and Syria, it is less likely in the minds of swing voters that Washington would lend the kind of military support that would be necessary at a minimum to forcefully disarm the party.
Indeed, Aoun is already touting Hezbollah’s lack of military involvement in the recent Gaza conflict as a vindication of his 2006 Memorandum of Understanding with the group. That conflict, and the accompanying perception that Israel “went crazy” in Gaza, has also strengthened the minority alliance’s emphasis on maintaining Hezbollah’s arms as part of a strong national deterrent, at the expense of March 14’s preferred strategy of not provoking Israel.
All of this could change significantly, of course, should Hezbollah drag Lebanon irrationally or selfishly into another devastating conflict with Israel, either of its own accord or at the request of its allies in Syria and/or Iran. Both the FPM and Hezbollah clearly recognize the danger, however, and have apparently gone to great lengths, perhaps over the opposition of more hard-line Hezbollah cadres and leaders, to avoid the potentially devastating electoral blow that would likely come with such an ill-conceived step.
In the meantime, the minority alliance as a whole stands to reap further gains, in the absence of direct conflict or concrete actions by the Obama administration to aid March 14, from an Israeli leadership that appears to most Lebanese to be more unpredictable and dangerous than ever before.
Nicholas Noe is the co-founder of Mideastwire.com, a Beirut-based translation service covering the Arab and Iranian media. He is the editor of the 2007 Verso book Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, and is the author of the Century Foundation report “Re-Imagining the Lebanon Track: Toward a New U.S. Policy.”
