In recent weeks, one of the more useless and overused words in Lebanon’s political lexicon ­ reform ­ has again been tossed around with abandon. The latest reform talk has been led by President Emile Lahoud, who vowed to rid the political system of its endemic corruption, which this summer’s succession of scandals highlighted. But if past experience is anything to go on, reform will soon hit a brick wall.
There are two sets of reasons for this, the first related to the structure of the political system, the second to Lahoud’s future presidential ambitions.
The political system’s structure first: When Lahoud came to power in 1998, he saw himself much the same way as did former President Fouad Chehab, whose contempt for the traditional political class was pervasive. What Chehab, a military man who hailed from an established family, grasped, was that in Lebanon there were two parallel power structures: the traditional, mostly sectarian patrons; and the state, with is purportedly non-partisan institutions.
In order to impose his authority on the patrons, Chehab realized he had to expand state power, and co-opt those traditional leaders he could. Part and parcel of this effort was to reform the political system and expand the state’s reach to hitherto isolated areas, such as southern Lebanon. Chehab failed in the face of the patrons’ resistance, and that was not all a bad thing: for Chehab’s reliance on the state meant considerable reliance on the army, so that the political system was essentially run for a time by the security services.
Lahoud’s first days in power were supposed to follow that model. At his inauguration ­ which Druze leader Walid Jumblatt ungenerously referred to as a “coronation” ­ Lahoud warned the patrons to watch out. There was much breathlessness as the public waited for heads to roll. Yet two years later most voters, realizing the reform process had gone nowhere, handed the president a devastating electoral defeat.
The reason was simple: given a choice between the security services and traditional confessional patrons, most Lebanese opted for the latter, especially when the state’s representatives were shown to be either as power hungry as the patrons, or toothless. The Lebanese came to see reform as simply an effort by the president to confiscate as much power as he could from his rivals, most prominently the man who in 2000 would again become prime minister: Rafik Hariri.
That leads us to the present, and Lahoud’s newly minted reform project. Few really expect the president to achieve in his last year in power what he was unable to in his first. Nor does anybody doubt that reform today is Lahoud’s way of persuading the public, and Syria, that he merits an extended or renewed mandate once his term expires next year.
Lahoud’s reform campaign shrewdly reaches out in multiple directions. It has led the Syrians to cock an interested ear, since President Bashar Assad is himself engaged in what seems to be a never-ending domestic reform effort. Lahoud is telling the Syrians that it is worth their while to support him in 2004, despite their reluctance to bend the Lebanese Constitution out of shape yet again at such a nervous time in Syrian-Lebanese relations.
Less vital to Lahoud than Syria, but surely important, is the president’s public image. With one financial scandal following another this summer, the president wants to prove to his compatriots that he can clean up the mess. The only problem is that the public, rightly or wrongly, is not convinced that any official really stands above the fray or is unscathed.
A third potential advantage of the reform effort, at least according to those in the know, is that it might put on the spot several of Lahoud’s potential rivals for the presidency, whose integrity leaves something to be desired. Indeed, the president’s main audience here is, again, Syria’s leadership, which in the coming months will have to weigh the costs and benefits of backing this potential candidate or that.
Who can blame Lahoud for wanting to resurrect reform as a vital national issue? But the process will demand more than simply issuing public statements, echoed by the president’s cronies. And it will have to be mainly directed at the public, not Damascus, since that is where the primary allegiance of officials should lie.
Perhaps the president’s men should also ponder this: In 1998 Syria was willing to sanction Lahoud’s unilateral domination of the political system, at the expense of the traditional patrons, particularly Hariri. When that experiment didn’t work, the Syrians paused and reconsidered. With the aftereffects of the Iraq war still very much present, the priority for Damascus is internal unity and stability in Lebanon, which mostly means satisfying the patrons.
Lahoud knows this, and realizes that the problem is one of numbers. It’s him against all the others, and the only weapon he has is their dishonesty. Yet even that may not prove enough to keep him in office.

Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. His weblog is www.beirutcalling.blogspot.com