Rules of the Game
In 2005, elections were held according to the 2000 Electoral Law – a law that was shaped up by the Syrians in a way that guarantees the win of specific forces across Lebanon. The law is informally referred to as the “Ghazi Kanaan Law”, after the head of the “Lebanon portfolio” in the Syrian regime during that era had played the major role in imposing that law in 2000.
In 2005, and despite the Syrian military eviction from the Land of the Cedars following the Lebanese [popular] and the International [political] pressures on Damascus after the assassination of Lebanon’s Former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, there were no real attempts to change the law into a more representative one. The Lebanese Speaker of the Parliament, Nabih Berri, orchestrated public and secret efforts to maintain the “Ghazi Kanaan Law” that would guarantee the interests of the major players on the Lebanese Political scene, while undermining the true representativity in Christian regions.
The Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) led by General Michel Aoun benefited from this marginalization of the Christians and tried to link it exclusively to Sunni desires of power by marketing the 2000 Law as the “Kanaan – Hariri Law”. Aoun further highlighted his “victim” status by emphasizing the concept of the 2005 “Quadripartite Alliance” which grouped the four major Muslim Parties of Lebanon. Nonetheless, Hezbollah’s General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah declared recently that while Hezbollah supporters voted according to that alliance in specific and limited districts such as Baabda-Aley or Beirut, they gave votes to Aoun’s “Change and Reform” Lists in other important battleground districts such as Zahle and Jbeil, thus depriving the “Quadripartite Alliance” concept from a lot of its substance. Benefiting from an effective propaganda focused on the “unfairness of the rules of the game” along with the “victimization of the Christian voice”, Aoun won a clear majority in most Christian districts in 2005 in what was called an “Orange Tsunami”.
In 2009, the rules of the game were totally changed. If the 2005 extension of the “Ghazi Kanaan Law” effects was “cooked” in the dark rooms of Ain Tineh – the Speaker’s residence-; the 2009 law was imposed by a military coup attempt that was led by Hezbollah in the streets of Beirut and Southern Mount Lebanon. Hezbollah and their pro-Syrian allies did not stop the fighting -that erupted as a “protest” in response to decisions by the Lebanese Government that did not suit the Shia Party's interests-, until they imposed a “package deal” that included going back to the 1960 Caza Law that they thought would favor their Christian main ally, Michel Aoun, in a repetition of the 2005 phenomenon.
Having as a priotity the stop of the fighting as well as the election of President Michel Sleiman after months of barriers to all democratic processes in the country imposed by the March 8 Hezbollah-led Coalition of which Aoun’s FPM had become an integral part; the March 14 Coalition agreed on the “Package deal” that was signed in Doha. The Lebanese Forces’ Leader, Dr. Samir Geagea, signed the agreement “with reservation”, in a complaint about the way things were handled before and during the Doha meeting. In light of the 2009 Election results, it is clear that the ones who imposed the rules of the game ended up losing their bet, mainly due to the miscalculations and the political shortsightedness of the Christian components of the March 8 Coalition.
Dynamics of the Christian Mainstream
The 2005 “Orange Tsunami” was transformed in 2009 into a deception to which Aoun and his followers were not prepared. The changes in Aoun’s positions over the course of the last four years were radical and shocking; they were enough to make him lose his Christian majority.
In 2009, Aoun lost his “Quadripartite Alliance” claim after Hassan Nasrallah publicly stated the truth of what happened in 2005: while the [public] alliance with Hezbollah in Baabda-Aley made the March 14 Christians lose a lot on the Christian front, the [secret] alliances in Jbeil and Zahle gave Aoun Shia votes while not affecting his Christian support.
In 2009, Aoun turned from a supposed “liberator” from the Syrians to the best cover of Syrian interests in the Christian areas: even the most pro-Syrian parties such as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and the Baath Party consider the FPM as the best possible “tool” to expand their interests into the Christian mainstream.
In 2009, Aoun switched his status from the [2005] “Hero of the Christians” to a weak leader who seeks dhimmi-like protection from Hezbollah, and who would not mind visiting Teheran and pledging obedience to the Mullah regime there.
In 2009, Aoun neglected tears and hearts of hopeful families of detainees in Syrian prisons [including those of former comrades of Aoun himself in the Lebanese Army] as he shook hands and exchanged extended laughs with the head of the very regime that is responsible for their kidnapping.
In 2009, Aoun was transformed from a former Commander-in-Chief of the Lebanese Army to the main defender of the Hezbollah armed militia – he even blamed the Lebanese Army when the young and promising Officer, Samer Hanna, was killed in Southern Lebanon by a Hezbollah Militiaman.
The “Change” that Aoun had promised in 2005 was indeed a fundamental change of positions, as he tried to use the Christian Majority as a fuel to his political and personal interests. That Change was further materialized into a complete modification of the FPM’s written goals, when the famous 2005 Campaigning “Orange Book” got removed from all the FPM’s platforms including the movement’s official website.
As expected, the Change in positions did not come without friction and effects: in 2009, Aoun and his allies got less than 50% of the Christian vote with striking defeats for FPM high profiles such as Aoun’s son-in-law Gebran Bassil in Batroun and Aoun’s long-time companion Issam Abou Jamra in Ashrafieh. In areas such as Jbeil, Baabda or Northern Metn, the FPM relied on heavy mobilizations of parties such as Hezbollah, Amal or Tachnag in order to rescue lists that witnessed a clear degradation in their support from Christian Neutrals. In Kesrouan and Zghorta, [even] the presence of Michel Aoun and Sleiman Frangie in person on top of their lists did not prevent a huge decline in the support of the March 8 lists that were challenged there by their March 14 counterparts at a nearly equal level. In Zahle, the presence of Elie Skaff as a high local profile on the pro-Syrian list was not enough either to prevent the loss of the majority of the Christian votes and the totality of the seven seats there. Jezzine might be the only exception in which the setting that was –intentionally or unintentionally- created by the March 8 allies replicated a simulation of the 2005 environment that was favorable to the FPM’s “Tsunami”, with people in 2009 voting against an Amal-backed list in a majorly Christian area after years of inability to elect their representatives. Also, March 14 did not present a strong alternative in Jezzine.
Post 2009 Elections: the Blame Game
The clear decline in the FPM’s popularity and the inability of the March 8 Christian parties to provide a Parliamentary majority to Hezbollah were not matched by any self-assessment or auto-evaluation. They were rather accompanied by an endless blame game, through which Aoun and his followers blamed everyone but themselves for their own loss. After causes such as the money flow or the Diaspora voting proved ineffective since they were used by both coalitions alike, and even more apparently sometimes by the March 8 Coalition; Aoun turned the blame to the International Observers and accused them of having been there to implement a given pre-set plan rather than to fairly monitor the elections. Moreover, Aoun’s losing son-in-law, Gebran Bassil, blamed the people’s minds for not having “understood the [right] steps that the FPM undertook” – a statement that reminds me of desperate mothers who would blame the failing exam grade of their school kid on the inability of professors to understand the exceptional intelligence of their [genius] kid, in order to avoid putting any blame on their son at any cost.
Hezbollah also joined the blame race. First they declared that the March 8 Coalition won the “popular vote”, despite losing the elections. This concept is totally outside the rules of the game: that was the case for example in the 2000 US Presidential Elections and it did not have any importance. Moreover, this statement should be put into perspective to be understood: In the 2009 elections, Hezbollah launched a kind of “referendum” over the “weapons of the resistance”; that is why the party aimed at increasing the participation rates even in predominantly-Shia areas in which there was no competition, such as South Lebanon Districts (Nabatiyyeh, Marjeyoun, Bent Jbeil, Tyre or Zahrani) and North Bekaa Districts (Baalbeck-Hermel). On the other hand, the March 14 forces only focused their efforts on “Battleground districts”, while “guaranteed” districts were not really at the heart of March 14 campaigning.
Furthermore, Hezbollah did not mind to accuse the Country’s highest Christian Religious Authority, namely the Maronite Patriarch, in an unprecedented attempt to criticize Bkerke, its role and its positions. The unacceptable criticism that was pronounced by Hassan Nasrallah in person comes as a surprise after Hezbollah supporters had recently agressively invaded predominantly-Christian districts of Beirut, in response to an imitation of their [political and religious] leader on LBC TV. It must be noted that the March 8 Christians had paved the way for Hezbollah’s criticism of Cardinal Nasrallah Peter Sfeir with their non-stop attacks on the head of the Maronite Church – an attitude that definitely contributed to the decline of the March 8 Christian Parties’ representativity in the Lebanese Christian Street.
The March 14 Coalition for Lebanon once again proved its commitment to the country, abiding by the laws and the rules of the game, even when those rules were imposed and did not reflect the true aspirations of the people of Lebanon. The Lebanese gave a majority to those who respect rules, and they punished those who impose rules and then resort to unfounded blame games to justify their inability to win through them.
