Day By Day

Monday, June 13, 2005

Lebanon Election Update

Across the Bay notes that Jumblatt is not taking Aoun's victories very well. He writes:
Jumblat is pissed and claimed this a loss for Christian moderation, and threw a nasty jab that this was a replay of Syrian intervention in 1976, which claimed to be on behalf of Christians, but then never left. He also made the curious claim that the Syrians will now try to regain control over Lebanon through selling out Hizbullah and its weapons to the Americans. And that they (namely Bashar and Lahoud) cunningly brought in Aoun to specifically target Hizbullah. Incendiary stuff. He's pissed. Yet, the Shouf went all to him, and apparently so did Baabda-Aley (we're not sure if one candidate of the Aoun list managed to break through or not), and his coalition list won in the western Bekaa-Rashaya (kicking out two really annoying pro-Syrians, Elie Ferzli and Abdel-Rahim Mrad). And it seems that Zahle eventually showed a breakthrough for Nicholas Fattoush, backed by the Bristol opposition, which spoiled Aoun-Skaff's sweep.

But if this is a signal from Jumblat, it's not a good one, because it means that he'll go deeper into the Amal-PoG camp to try to get what he wants. Ghassan Tueni is taking a more balanced position, seeing the dynamism of this round (not seen anywhere else) as good for Lebanese democracy, and in one sense, he is right. Aound also sounded conciliatory and said he won't isolate anyone, but he won't be isolated either. Let's see what happens.
Indeed..., stay tuned.

Read it here.

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