While Lebanon now has a government, the five-month power vacuum has highlighted cracks in its creaking confessional system. According to influential Lebanese pollster Abdu Saad, the system is in need of complete overhaul, reports Lucy Fielder from Beirut Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun's popularity in his Mount Lebanon heartland has been the subject of much speculation in Lebanon in recent years. Did he win or lose support among Lebanon's Maronites through his alliance with the armed Shia party Hizbullah, which fought the war with Israel in 2006? This question re-surfaced with the intransigence shown by "Le General", as the former army chief is known to his supporters, during the latest governmental crisis to hit the country. According to the leading election pollster and head of the Beirut Centre for Research and Information Abdu Saad, Aoun's support has remained strong, if it has also been dented at times. "Aoun has scored a victory," Saad said in an interview in his office in Hamra in west Beirut. The "March 14 [movement] won the election, but the result has been nullified, and it had no effect." The movement to which Saad referred, which takes its name from an anti-Syrian demonstration after the killing of Lebanese politician Rafik Al-Hariri on that date in 2005, tried to weaken Aoun after the election, Saad maintains. Yet, many in the parliamentary majority led by the new Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri have taken heart from the fact that Aoun did not gain as much as expected, even if his parliamentary share rose to 27 seats from 21 and his demands have now been met. Aoun now has four ministries in the new government, including the key Telecommunications Ministry, as well as a minister of state. According to Saad, Aoun's support is now likely to flood back, given that many Christians are looking for a strong leader that can preserve their political presence in the country. "He was the strongest single Christian leader, representing half their support. Now he'll grow even stronger," Saad said. While Saad is seen as leaning towards the opposition, he shares with many Lebanese a general sense of disillusionment with the political class. After more than six months without a president, military escalation on Beirut's streets last year and this summer's political deadlock, the system appears to be creaking to a halt in the absence of Syrian control. Major flaws in Lebanon's political institutions appeared following the July 2006 war, when Hizbullah was angered by a lack of support from the Western-backed government and accused it of tacitly supporting Israel's war. Following the war, Hizbullah withdrew its ministers from the cabinet and began its demands for a "blocking third" of cabinet seats. It took a prolonged sit-in in downtown Beirut and then last year's takeover of western Beirut by the Shia guerrillas and their allies to induce the birth of a national-unity government last year at an emergency conference in Doha. "It can't go on like this," Saad commented. "I have always felt that a majority system does not suit Lebanon. The country cannot be ruled by a majority, because then who will protect the minority? It's not as if we have built a state with functioning institutions." Although Al-Hariri's parliamentary majority won June's elections, Aoun, Hizbullah and the Shia Amal group argued that their representation in the government should reflect their influence in the Christian and Shia communities. Add to that Hizbullah's determination to maintain a veto on strategic issues pertaining to its arsenal of weapons, and Lebanon has a recipe for paralysis. "What would suit us is a presidential system in which the president is elected by popular vote," Saad said. "Nobody would then ask for veto power." Many powers were shifted from the Maronite Christian position of president to the cabinet under the Taif Agreement that ended the civil war of 1975-1990, in order to ensure better political representation for Sunni and Shia Muslims. "Before this agreement, the president made sure that all sectarian leaders were represented in the government, but only as his aides. The Syrians made sure that this tradition was preserved. When they left, this big flaw was exposed," Saad said. While the position is now more than simply that of a figurehead, the president has few powers to break the deadlocks that have plagued Lebanon in the post-Syrian era. "The president does not have the power to dissolve parliament and call a referendum. There is no democracy in the world where that's the case," Saad said. According to Saad, another flaw then and now has been that the parliament appoints the president, leaving the position subject to deal-making and horse-trading. With the right constitutional checks in place, the president, regardless of his or her own sect, would protect minorities and Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance, with the voters as arbitrators, Saad believes. "Under this system, the people would be the guarantee," he said. Saad believes that despite its embrace of long-standing political rivals, the new cabinet will function, if only because it must. The political landscape is also likely to shift to the centre with the March 14 movement's power sapped by its inability to capitalise on the June election win and the breakaway of its most hawkish figurehead, Walid Jumblatt, in August. Al-Hariri is also widely expected to visit Damascus soon, ending a rift between his Sunni Future Movement and Lebanon's larger neighbour caused by the 2005 assassination of his father Rafik Al-Hariri, which the emerging March 14 movement and its Western and regional backers blamed on Syria. "The opposition wants Al-Hariri to succeed and to break with March 14, and once he has normal relations with Syria, they'll be weakened," Saad said. In time, Saad expects an easing of tensions between the Sunni and Shia communities, which exploded with the polarisation between the alliances led by the Future Movement and Hizbullah over the past few years. As a result, mainstream Sunni antagonism towards Hizbullah's arms capacity may weaken, Saad said. "It will take a bit of time, but that's what I think will happen. I have always believed that the Sunnis are not really against the resistance," he said.
