Anti-Syria general feels Lebanese political chill
By Lin Noueihed
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Just days after returning from exile to a hero’s welcome, the Maronite Christian general who sees himself as Lebanon’s savior from Syrian tutelage has already collided with his country’s political realities. The countdown has begun to Lebanon’s first general election without direct Syrian influence for 33 years, but Michel Aoun and his followers have been excluded from the two anti-Syrian opposition tickets announced so far.
A month ago, when Aoun was nearing the end of a 14-year exile in Paris, he said he expected more than 40 members of his Free Patriotic Movement to stand. That looks unlikely now.
The tens of thousands of youthful, orange-clad supporters who welcomed Aoun in Beirut on May 7 hoped the uncompromising soldier’s return would mark a fresh start for Lebanon.
But bitterness at the cold shoulder he has received from other anti-Syrian politicians now prevails.
Back at his villa in the hills above Beirut, Aoun dismissed the anti-Syrian opposition front as a charade that had been exposed by traditional interests at the ballot box.
“There is no opposition. There are traditional people who have weighed down on Lebanon. We are not traditionalists. We are reformists. They have no program,” he told Reuters.
“They are trying to isolate us, but we are people who cannot be isolated. We are not politicians like them, we are people with a broad base and no one can isolate us.”
Calls for Syria to pull its forces out of Lebanon mounted after the Feb. 14 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which many Lebanese blamed on Syria.
The assassination, which plunged Lebanon into its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, united Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims into a formidable opposition whose street protests forced the pro-Syrian government and security chiefs to go — and enabled Aoun to return.
But some Lebanese feel those triumphs have been tarnished by sectarian squabbling and political maneuvering within the opposition ahead of the parliamentary polls to be held in four rounds from May 29 to June 19.
Opposition figures were making last-ditch contacts on Wednesday to explore a possible joint list with Aoun in one mountain district shared by Druze, Christians and Shi’ites.
WHAT ELECTION?
Whether those efforts make headway or not, analysts say Aoun, who lost a battle with Syrian forces that ended the civil war, will become another player in Lebanon’s turbulent political game. But he will not sweep others out of the 128-seat house.
“Aoun has come back talking big but he is looking at five, six or seven seats. Three areas — Beirut, the south and the Bekaa — are really closed. The mountain (central Lebanon) is open and he may get a seat or two in the north,” said a Lebanese election expert, who asked not to be named.
“He’s in a tight position. He may think he liberated the country but that doesn’t mean anyone who has an established political place is going to move aside for him.” Candidates nominated by Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, are expected to sweep Beirut when the capital votes on May 29, in a repeat of his slain father’s last landslide victory there.
Aoun has no supporters on Hariri’s list or on one named by Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, who chose to team up with his civil war foes, the Maronite Lebanese Forces (LF), in his Shouf mountain stronghold southeast of Beirut.
Aoun visited LF leader Samir Geagea in jail on Wednesday to turn the page on a battle they fought at the end of the war, but said their first meeting since 1989 was not political.
A vehement opponent of Syria’s 29-year military presence in Lebanon, Aoun had harsh words for leaders like Jumblatt, who had worked with Damascus for many of those years.
“The coming parliament will be copy of the outgoing parliament because they are the same people. These forces that made the law will return,” he said, referring to the electoral law designed in 2000 to win Syria’s allies seats in the house.
“There are no elections with this a la carte law…the results of this law will be very dangerous. Half the Lebanese people will be marginalized.”
The 70-year-old said his movement would run in Mount Lebanon, the north and part of the Bekaa Valley. Though disillusioned since his return, the hot-tempered man whose devoted followers call him “the General,” remained defiant.
“After the election things will stay the same, they will not improve. But we have a resistance. We will oppose them on basic issues,” he said. “We will have voices in parliament and a popular entourage. This half of the Lebanese people that was marginalized will not be quiet.”
