Lebanonwire.com | Hariri's son enters Lebanon election race amid Christian warnings

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May 11, 2005

Hariri's son enters Lebanon election race amid Christian warnings
by Hala Boncompagni

BEIRUT - Saadeddin Hariri, son of the slain former premier Rafiq Hariri, has thrown his hat into the ring for elections which Christian figures warned Wednesday could upset Lebanon's delicate religious coexistence.

Hariri, whose father was killed on February 14, planned to unveil his electoral list Tuesday night but delayed the move amid cracks within the anti-Syrian Lebanese opposition.

The government, under pressure from the international community, said elections for a 128-seat parliament will take place on four consecutive Sundays starting May 29, a month after Syria pulled its troops from Lebanon.

The polls will be based on a Syrian-tailored law used in the last polls in 2000 that breaks Lebanon into large constituencies, seen as unfavourable to the large Christian minority which is demanding smaller voting areas.

Christian hardline leader Michel Aoun, who returned home to a triumphant welcome at the weekend after 15 years in exile, savaged the electoral laws and urged his people to "stay mobilised".

"We will never submit ourselves to this situation and we reject folkloric meetings that are held to promote the scenarios of alliances that are nothing but treachery and falsehood," he said.

Meanwhile, led by Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, Christian bishops warned that the 2000 law "violates ... coexistence between Christians and Muslims and does not allow for fair elections.

"Based on this formula, only 15 Christian deputies will be elected by Christian voters while 49 others will be chosen by mainly Muslim voters," they said in a statement.

"This means that Muslims will choose Christian deputies as was the case when Lebanon was under (Syrian) tutelage".

The terms of the 1989 Taif accord that paved the way for the end of the 1975-1990 civil war stipulates an equal number of seats in parliament for Christians and Muslims.

But Christians elected in the larger constituencies have usually been chosen by Muslims close to the Syrian camp.

On Tuesday Sfeir told visitors: "We have been unable so far to unify our ranks and speak with one voice. There are too many contradictions ... the situation is deteriorating."

Cracks in opposition ranks have emerged amid reports that Druze chief Walid Jumblatt, with the backing of Rafiq Hariri's Sunni Muslim party, appears to accept the larger constitutional boundaries favoured by the pro-Syrian Shiites.

In a renewed effort to close ranks, the Christian and Muslim opposition have announced plans to meet Thursday in a fresh bid to define a strategy for the polls.

The meeting will aim to draw up "a democratic reform programme to serve as a basis for the elections battle" and "to guarantee coordination among the different factions of the opposition", they said in a statement.

A newcomer to politics, Hariri's son, Saadeddin, "now bears the onus of participating in the slithery Byzantine political scene in Lebanon", the English-language Daily Star said in an editorial Wednesday.

"His inexperience in walking the crooked paths of the Lebanese political environment is not a detriment but rather an asset to him," the newspaper said.

"Because of his lack of exposure to the corrupt reality of the Lebanese state, he has the means to resist negative aspects of governance that are so prevalent here."

Hariri, 35, who has been heading his father's financial empire, told thousands of supporters at his home late Monday he will carry his father's mantle and run in one of Beirut's three constituencies.
He has until Friday to announce his list.