3 - Communal Politics in Lebanon

Summary

INTRODUCTION: AN ELECTORAL PUZZLE

Lebanon held parliamentary by-elections in August 2007 to replace two assassinated deputies from the western-leaning ruling coalition – one from the Sunni community, and another from the Maronite Christian community. Although held on the same day in districts that were scarcely more than ten kilometers apart, the elections differed dramatically in both the intensity of their campaigns and the closeness of their results. Despite repeated attempts in the preceding months to find a consensus candidate for the Christian seat – including a proposal to award the seat to the assassinated deputy's father by acclamation – government- and opposition-aligned Christians put forward candidates for the fiercely contested seat. The former nominated former President Amin al-Gemayel against a candidate from Michel Aoun's opposition-aligned Free Patriotic Movement, the largest Christian faction in parliament. Taking on added gravity, at the time of the by-election, local observers saw Gemayel and Aoun as rivals in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for later in the year.

In contrast, no uncertainty lingered over the outcome of the Sunni contest, in which the candidate of the Future Movement ran virtually unopposed. According to local election monitors, the nominee's two main “opponents” were, in fact, his own campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, who, according to themonitors, submitted their candidacies in order to hire three sets of “candidate representatives” instead of one. No other factions bothered to register because they knew they had no chance of winning. Reflecting the lack of opposition, campaigning for the Sunni seat barely registered in the public consciousness and received virtually no coverage in the press.

In contrast, boistrous campaign rallies for the two Christian candidates drew thousands of enthusiastic supporters and attracted widespread media coverage and seemingly endless political analysis. Election results, as summarized in Figure 3.1, reflected the diverging competitiveness of the races. Less than 20 percent of the electorate turned out in Beirut, and the FutureMovement's Sunni candidate won his seat in a landslide with some 86 percent of the vote – more than six times that of his closest “rival.” Meanwhile, turnout doubled for the Christian contest, and although Gemayel took the majority of Maronite votes, the opposition candidate won the seat by only a handful of ballots – less than one-half of 1 percent of the vote – due to stronger support from other Christian constituencies in the district.