15 December 2006
The Lebanese opposition's
first casualty
It adds little to the debate over
MP Michel Aoun to note that this
past Sunday he addressed the multitudes in the guise of a giant pumpkin. The general
was not at his sartorial best, and when the
searing orange had ceased to blind us, and presumably him, he must have realized this. But there is something more important than Aoun's attire that his partisans should now seriously consider:
If any group is set to take a tumble in the foreseeable future, it is the
Free Patriotic Movement.
My own feelings for Aoun have lately fluctuated between rampant dislike and cold hostility. This makes me a less than credible chronicler
of the general's fortunes,
but it wasn't always so. I twice
visited Aoun during his early days
of exile, after he had been deposited somewhere in the Parisian countryside - too close to Euro Disney for my taste. He was
guarded by a phalanx of
French gendarmes, paid for by French taxpayers, all belonging to a
country that Aoun has forsaken
since becoming a Maronite knockoff of Hugo Chavez. I found the general amiable, a monsieur
tout le monde, generous with
his time and unaffected in his approach. I've learned from several people, none enthusiasts, that the private Aoun has little changed.
However, the public Aoun is
in trouble, and his urgency on Sunday to force a final showdown
with the government confirmed that something was amiss. The
general knows he and his
own are the weakest link in the campaign against
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
The Aounists cannot long endure an open-ended
sit-in, both because they
are not earning salaries to do so
and probably because the looming holiday
season threatens to melt their momentum.
And there is something else:
Aoun realizes that as
package deals are unwrapped left
and right to resolve the ongoing crisis,
his chances of seeing the presidency diminish.
Indeed, the latest basket
of ideas from Arab League Secretary
General Amr Moussa includes
a proposal for the March 14
coalition and the
opposition to consent to a compromise president. If that process goes
through, Aoun will not be the chosen
one, although Hizbullah may use him as their opening card. The party will
think long and hard before accepting bids on the presidency,
however, because it realizes that this
will lead to a noisy divorce with the general, when
it still needs the cross-sectarian
cover he provides for a largely Shiite protest movement. The thing is,
Hizbullah may soon not have the luxury to bat away arrangements that involve getting
rid of President Emile Lahoud.
The reason is that Hizbullah is being strangled
by its conflicting commitments. The party owes Syria
on undermining the Hariri
tribunal, and owes Iran on just about everything else. This situation has pushed Hizbullah into an uncomfortable confrontation with the Sunni community,
one that is damaging its appeal
in the Arab world. Since that appeal
is essential to the Iranian leadership, which has sought to use popular Arab antagonism against Israel as a means of discrediting pro-Western Arab regimes, Hizbullah's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, risks undercutting his own importance. It could be that
in an effort to salvage his troublesome
Syrian and Iranian agendas, Nasrallah will have to jettison his most dispensable ally: Michel Aoun.
If
that happens, Aoun's double-or-nothing gamble could permanently cripple his ambitions. Soon after the
summer war between Hizbullah and Israel, the
general quietly visited Nasrallah in what was apparently
an early effort to prepare what is taking
place today in Downtown Beirut. Aoun had backed Hizbullah during the conflict,
in the face of widespread condemnation, and felt Nasrallah owed him. It
is now Aoun who is most
vocally warning that the opposition might form an interim government against the one backed by the majority. As the general's rhetoric
escalates, his anxiety is becoming
more palpable. Even under the best of circumstances his being elected
would require an immensely complex succession of events that is
looking increasingly unlikely.
Aoun
needs a majority in Parliament to become president. He doesn't
have one, which is why he would
like to see early parliamentary elections before Lahoud's mandate
expires. But even assuming such elections take place, a doubtful
proposition, are there any guarantees that Aoun and his allies would win more seats than in 2005? If anything, the general's
popularity has declined. Moreover, while he has complained long and hard about last year's election law, it
was actually beneficial to him. Under any other system, the likelihood of his winning a similar
landslide virtually evaporates. And Aoun's dismissal of the 2005 law is such
that he's locked himself into accepting
a new law, particularly one
that might benefit comrades who lost their
seats, such as Suleiman Franjieh.
Once
that electoral hurdle is crossed,
and assuming, fancifully, that everything goes Aoun's way, can the
general then convince Hizbullah and the Syrians
that he's their man? If the Syrians are back in town by then, their
preference will be for someone more controllable; and if they are not, this will mean that
all sides must accept a
compromise candidate. In neither case does Aoun fit the bill. By accumulating power through
persistent divisiveness, the
general has allowed himself to be squeezed
dry by his associates; he has also surrendered
any opportunity to emerge as everyone's first, or far more importantly
second, choice.
Aoun's
personal misfortune matters little. However, when you
speak to his supporters, it becomes obvious
how deeply uneasy they are with their
society, the nature of Lebanon's government,
and the fate of the Christian community - and an overwhelming majority are parochial Christians, regardless of the transient love-fest
with Hizbullah. If Aoun
crashes, as such contraptions
invariably do, someone will have to explain to the Aounists why
they have followed that pied piper down a blind alley for the second time in just 16 years. And when no answer
comes, all the orange will change to a menacing hue of
black.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY
STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=77629#