Can you sidestep
Aoun in ousting Lahoud?
By Michael Young
One
can sympathize with the Maronite patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir. He will
likely have the honor of kicking Emile Lahoud into the
abyss if the so-called March 14 coalition can wrestle the struggling
president to the edge of the cliff.
But Sfeir also knows that much
is at stake
in the still-hazy effort to
rid Lebanon of Lahoud's decaying presence, with the only
serious guarantee of success being - fortunately or unfortunately - broad national endorsement of
Michel Aoun as his successor.
That is, of course, Aoun's calculation.
The general has played his cards
well, opening a dialogue with Hizbullah to better impose his will on Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri. That did, however, require
averting his gaze from Hizbullah's strategic
alliance with the Iranian and Syrian
regimes, at the expense of Lebanese national sovereignty; signing off on an agreement with
Hassan Nasrallah so vague that Hizbullah will insist it
has the right to bear arms until Israel
sinks into the sea; and
senselessly insulting the memory of Rafik
Hariri last week by refusing
to participate in the one-year commemoration of his death. But Aoun, for all the animosity he
has provoked in the parliamentary majority and, reportedly, in Washington and Paris, must remain the favorite as presidential
candidate, because there is
no obvious alternative to get
rid of Emile Lahoud.
Here's
the rationale. For Lahoud to go, Sfeir must
acquiesce. But for Sfeir to call for Lahoud's removal, he needs
a nominee everyone can agree upon.
But he will not approve of someone opposed by Aoun, whatever his personal reservations
about the general, because that would split
the Christians. Without Sfeir and
Aoun on their side, the March 14 forces will have a mountain to climb in sponsoring a
new president.
Walid
Jumblatt and Ziad Majed of the
Democratic Left have argued, correctly, that on March 14, 2005, the then-opposition missed an historic opportunity by failing to march on Baabda and evict
the president. However, it also
missed an historic opportunity to liquidate the remnants of the Syrian order
when it later
agreed to re-elect Nabih Berri as speaker of Parliament.
At the time, I had argued that
Jumblatt's and Hariri's acceptance
of Berri would come back to
haunt them; that in justifying the speaker's return on the grounds that he was the
favored candidate of the
Shiites, they had objectively created a situation advantageous to Aoun, who is indisputably the most popular
of Maronite politicians.
Now, March 14 must deal with Aoun, and for all the criticism leveled at the general
in this space, he has made himself indispensable
to his former comrades in
opposition. Both Jumblatt and his parliamentarian
Wael Bou Faour have agreed that Aoun is a legitimate candidate, but have also
watered this down by saying that whoever
is anointed must emerge from a process
of dialogue between the various political forces. Is this being
constructively ambiguous,
or just a way of implicitly rejecting Aoun?
Most
would argue the latter. Even after the
improvement in relations began
between Jumblatt and Aoun in January, the Druze leader was still wondering whether the general
could be trusted, given that his homecoming
followed negotiations with senior Syrian officials and with
Lahoud (a fact confirmed in a television
interview by Fayez Qazzi, who mediated between
Syria and Aoun). However, Jumblatt is caught in a dilemma: Unless he gets Aoun on board, he will
have little Christian backing
for taking Lahoud down; but
bringing Aoun on board basically means fulfilling the general's presidential ambitions.
So, does this mean Jumblatt is
on the verge of backing
Aoun? Most probably not, but don't
put this beyond the Druze leader if he finds all other
paths closed - knowing full well that his preference
is for a president who is more pliable. The Aoun-Jumblatt match is potentially made in hell. But Aoun alone, because of the communal support he enjoys, can cut
the Gordian knot around the
presidency; he alone can bring
the reluctant Shiites on board, even though
Nasrallah is as reluctant to see Aoun in power as
is Jumblatt; and he alone
can discredit all other Maronite candidates whom the opposition might choose in his place (including the most
interesting one of all, lawyer
Chibli Mallat, the only contender
who has had the gall to organize
a full-fledged campaign, and who has doggedly
harped on the imperative of removing Lahoud). Jumblatt, ever the realist,
might yet decide that it's better to swallow the bitter pill of Aoun now and break Syria's hold over the
presidency than to allow stalemate to persist - stalemate that could facilitate
his own assassination
by Syrian agents. Moreover,
deep down Jumblatt may calculate that
once Aoun is president, he would have no choice but to confront Syria and Hizbullah.
There is something else that Jumblatt
won't tell us. While his
alliance with Saad Hariri remains
a cornerstone of his endeavors, the Druze leader has little faith that
the head of the Future Movement can stand up to Saudi Arabia when it
comes to compromising with Syria. For example, amid efforts in the kingdom last month to agree on a formula that would have allowed Shiite ministers to re-enter
the government, Hariri signed off on a shoddy accord that effectively granted Hizbullah a wide margin to indefinitely pursue the armed struggle. Jumblatt, along with Lebanese Forces leader Samir
Geagea, torpedoed the initiative and a subsequent version modified by
Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora,
despite Hariri's plea for
support.
Given that his Sunni partners are wobbly, Jumblatt had little choice
but to strengthen his ties with the
Christians, particularly
Aoun. That's why the Druze
leader sought to avoid a
clash between Aoun and Geagea in the Baabda-Aley
by-election; and why Geagea accepted
a compromise over Pierre Dakkash's candidacy, knowing that without Jumblatt's electoral support, his chances of
winning with May Chidiac were negligible.
Nabih Berri has scheduled a dialogue session for
March 2, and the table has already been fashioned to include the leaders of the large parliamentary blocs. This
could be a double-edged sword. It's always bad news when a party to a dispute pretends to be a mediator, and there
is little ambiguity that, for the moment, Berri, though keen to increase his margin of maneuver,
will remain on Hizbullah's and Syria's side when it comes
to the myriad disputes today dividing Lebanon - from the presidency to the Hariri investigation to relations with
Syria.
In
order to abort such an effort and deny Berri and Hizbullah an opportunity to kill the momentum
to oust Lahoud, Jumblatt
must think fast. From one vantage point, the only option he may end
up having is backing Aoun, even if he uses the delay
in admitting to this as leverage to extract concessions from the general.
If you have doubts, remember the Druze leader has
more shocking reversals under
his belt.
Michael
Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Copyright (c) 2006 The Daily
Star