Lebanon bishops say elections to weaken Christians
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s Maronite Christian bishops warned on Wednesday that elections starting this month would under-represent their community in favour of Muslim politicians and upset the country’s delicate sectarian balance.
“Insisting on holding parliamentary elections under this unfair law will have detrimental consequences that we do not want or wish for,” the Council of Maronite Bishops said in a statement after an emergency meeting.
“We call on all Christian and Muslim officials to look at this delicate situation and put national interests ahead, holding onto the coexistence that brings together Muslims and Christians on an equal footing,” it said.
Lebanon’s political system carefully distributes political offices among myriad religious minorities who fought a 15-year war that split the country into Christian and Muslim enclaves.
The Taif Accord that ended the 1975-1990 civil war grants half the seats in parliament to Christians and half to Muslims.
But the bishops said the law organising the polls, held in four rounds from May 29 to June 19, will penalise Christians and effectively give them less power in the chamber.
The bishops said the election law was imposed against the wishes of most Lebanese, whose street protests helped force Syria to end its 29-year military presence last month.
The law carves Lebanon into a mixture of larger and smaller constituencies favouring Damascus’ allies. It is expected to bring most of the same faces back.
Most Christian lawmakers, who want smaller constituencies so their voice is not lost among Muslims in larger voting areas, have protested against the law but did not have the majority to overturn it, particularly as the constitutional deadline for timely elections approached.
OBSERVERS
The first batch of 90 European Union election observers arrived in Beirut on Wednesday, officials said. A two-member U.N. election assistance team is already in Lebanon discussing preparations for the ballot with the authorities.
Calls for Syria to withdraw from its neighbour mounted after the killing of Sunni Muslim former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which many Lebanese blamed on Damascus.
The February 14 killing united Christians, Sunnis and Druze into a formidable opposition that also succeeded in toppling the pro-Syrian government and security chiefs and securing an international investigation into Hariri’s assassination.
But to the dismay of many Lebanese who had hoped the pullout would mark a fresh start, splits over the law organising general elections are tearing the opposition apart.
Political sources say Hariri’s bloc and Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt broke with the opposition to strike a secret deal with the pro-Syrian Hizbollah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to keep the 2000 electoral law that serves them at the ballot box at the expense of most Christian opposition legislators.
Publicly, the opposition insists it remains united.
Christians, who are estimated to make up about 40 percent of the population, are split into four main camps: those loyal to Syria, a bloc of anti-Syrian deputies, supporters of anti-Syrian former general Michel Aoun and followers of the Lebanese Forces, a former rightwing militia.
The return of Aoun from exile and efforts to free the Lebanese Forces leader from jail complicates alliance-making, giving a new voice to Maronites who have felt disenfranchised since the war but further dividing them at the ballot box.
