BAABDAT, Lebanon - For the first time in decades, voters in Lebanon's overwhelmingly Christian Metn region face an election Sunday in which Syrian influence is not the main divide between the rival candidate lists and not everyone is happy about it.

Veteran firebrand Michel Aoun, who was driven into 15 years of exile by Syrian troops, has made common cause with longtime Damascus allies to field candidates against the main opposition list, in an unlikely alliance that has divided Christian opinion.

Aoun insists that Syria is no longer the main issue since its troop withdrawal in late April and is instead targeting the sectarian considerations that still dominate the rival alliance.

His Free Patriotic Current (CPL) is running a joint list of candidates with Michel Murr, father of the pro-Syrian defence minister of the same name, to run against the list of opposition MP Nassib Lahoud, cousin and veteran critic of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

Some voters here support Aoun's stand, charging that Lahoud too has made unpalatable allies among onetime Damascus supporters, like Sunni leader Saad Hariri and his Druze counterpart Walid Jumblatt.

"I'm actually leaning towards Aoun who really tried to ally himself with the opposition and never compromised with Syria," said one voter in this Metn village who identified herself only by her first name Marie.

"At least his hands are clean of Syrian money, unlike Hariri and the rest who all profited."

But for other voters in Baabdat, Aoun's alliance with Murr is a betrayal of the anti-Syrian cause.

"I'm angry that Aoun changed his mind and forged an alliance with former pro-Syrian elements," said grocer Khalil Abu Khalil.

"This will surely not work towards national reconciliation."

Another voter agrees. "I would have preferred to see a united Christian front rather than candidates reaching compromises with former pro-Syrian figures," she complains, again identifying herself only by her first name, Lucienne.

"We Christians are threatened as a dwindling minority in Lebanon," she says. "Muslims are gaining ground day by day and Christian politicians should have stayed away from them."

But down the road in the village of Bikfaya, there is more support for Aoun's position.

Elia Damassi, 19, says he feels cheated by traditional Christian politicians and accuses them of forming an alliance with fairweather oppositionists who long faithfully served Lebanon's Syrian masters.

"We expected Christians to unite against the pro-Syrian government and figures, not in a religious way but in an anti-Syrian way," he said.

Fifty-year-old grocer Munir welcomes the prospect of a real contest between the Aoun-Murr list and the main opposition alliance.

"At least here, we're having democratic elections which was not the case in southern Lebanon where the Shiites were allied and swept all the seats or in Beirut with the Sunnis," he said.

He was referring to the first two stages of Lebanon's four-phase parliamentary elections in which the main opposition alliance and the pro-Syrian bloc of Shiite movements Amal and Hezbollah made clean sweeps of all the seats in elections which Aoun's movement did not even bother to contest.

In nearby Brumana, Ricky Awad, 65, agreed, arguing Syria's troop withdrawal meant Lebanese politics could now return to more conventional lines.

"This year, we get to pick and choose," he said. "I'm grateful for this try-out of democracy.

"Syria's gone and it was the real cause of our divisions. Now is the time to live together again."

All eight of the seats in the overwhelmingly Christian Metn region are reserved for Christian candidates under Lebanon's complex electoral system which guarantees the minority community half of the 128-seats in parliament even though they form a much smaller proportion of the electorate.

But Aoun's movement has made similar alliances with longtime Syria allies in other, mixed regions of the country.

In the Baabda-Aley region, which also votes Sunday, it has joined up with dissident Druze MP Talal Arslan, while in the north, which votes in the final round the following weekend, it has allied with Christian former interior minister Suleiman Franjieh.

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