Overt attempts by Baabda Palace to help heal the wounds wrought by the squalid controversy over the Metn by-election offer an interesting parallel with the behavior of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri last August when various security agencies launched a sweeping crackdown against Christian opposition groups. Hariri was incensed that the draconian sweep took place, and especially so because it was initiated when he was out of the country. Nonetheless, he refused to exacerbate the crisis and stepped back from a looming confrontation in the interests of stability. This time it is Emile Lahoud and his camp who have been deeply disappointed by the failure of Michel Murr’s political machine to engineer his daughter Myrna Murr’s entry into Parliament, and encouragingly, this time the president is among those who seem determined to keep matters from getting worse.

The broad opposition coalition that foiled Michel Murr’s plans was neither created in a vacuum nor based on any single issue. Instead, it was made possible by a long list of grievances that united figures from all parts of the political spectrum: resentment at Murr’s heavy-handedness was buttressed by frustration over the moribund economy, Baabda’s failure to take the lead on badly needed reforms, a sense that the status quo had become even less tolerable in a region fraught with fears of all-out war, etc. Faced with such a mountainous pileup of factors contributing to his allies’ defeat, Lahoud did what Hariri did last year: He acted like a mature politician is supposed to by placing the welfare of the nation as a whole above petty partisan politics.

Accordingly, while Gabriel Murr’s victory has shown how a genuine opposition can and should be cobbled together to offer a credible alternative to the current regime, Lahoud’s reaction offers hope that those who rule might actually learn something from their humiliation in Metn. At the top of this wish list would have to be a new relationship between the president and the prime minister. If these two men can finally start working together, there is tremendous potential for progress on issues such as economic recovery, administrative and judicial reform, and privatization.

Just as the opposition now has a responsibility to move beyond slogans by producing detailed policy proposals, the current regime has an obligation to improve its performance as well. It should take every legitimate step in its power to make sure that the opposition’s job is not an easy one, and that doesn’t mean tapping phones and/or arresting protesters: It means reducing the seeming omnipresence of failure in all spheres of state activity so that if the opposition wants to score points with the electorate, it will have to do real work.

A well-informed child can point out many of the shortcomings of the current system, but Lebanon needs statesmen capable not just of identifying and decrying foul-ups but also of improving on successes when the occasion arises. If both those in power and those who would replace them start producing real-world solutions instead of criticizing one another for failing to do so, the level of political discourse cannot help but rise, a result to which no one in either camp can sincerely object.

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