Regardless of who is declared the victor in the Metn by-election, the entire nation will be the loser unless the result is widely accepted as genuine and fair. Given all that has happened before, during, and after the actual voting, however, that will be no mean feat. A significant portion of the population no longer has any trust in the government’s capacity for objectivity, a problem that arises in many countries but is made more manageable by the presence of an independent judiciary whose verdicts carry weight at all points along the political spectrum. What got Metn ­ and the rest of the country ­ into the current predicament is that no such judicial authority exists here which might otherwise defuse tensions.

The only thing that can remedy the situation is an understanding on the part of senior politicians that the days of their enjoying unchallenged supremacy are over. The system has to be reinvented, and all of its players have to either remake themselves in its new image or make way for others. This includes the Parliament, some of whose members have actually argued ­ in public, no less ­ that the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution is the House rather the courts; but especially the Cabinet, one of whose most prominent members is on record as opposing privacy during the balloting process; and the presidency, whose current holder entered office with a vow to uphold the rule of law but has since lost the trust of his people.
Reliable, competent, and honorable judges are the essential ingredient in any properly functioning democracy, and they must be fully independent in order to be any of these things. When so many competing interests are granted a modicum of freedom to contest one another’s claims, the only way to settle matters is to have a judicial system whose impartiality is beyond question and whose ability to serve as arbiter is therefore accepted by all. Unless such a judiciary exists ­ and is seen to exist ­ disagreements are not issues that come and go but rather infected sores that fester until they burst.

More is at stake on this issue than either relations between different factions within the Murr family or even the right of Metn’s residents to freely choose their own representative: Agendas as varied as privatization and administrative reform are in imminent peril unless the by-election is decided with integrity  and immediate steps are taken to prevent a recurrence of this debacle and others like it.

To this end, Rafik Hariri and Emile Lahoud must take the lead, and if they need the Syrians to mediate between them, so be it ­ so long as the job gets done. Hariri’s priority is to revamp the state’s finances as part of a plan to help the nation grow its way out of a stubborn and painful recession. Surely the prime minister understands that unless the current uproar is settled fairly and seen to have prompted necessary reforms,  his visions of economic recovery will evaporate like fat on a griddle. As for the president, his inauguration speech called not only for the rule of law but also for the strengthening of institutions vis-a-vis individuals. Surely he understands that if people keep wondering whether he still believes in those things, he will leave office having convinced them that he never did.

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