SUNDAY’S elections will go down as a watershed in Lebanese’s political history. The victory won by the March 14 bloc led by Saad Hariri is a clear statement from the Lebanese people that they have had enough of outside political interference in their country. It is a fresh declaration for independence. Henceforth, voters have said they alone will be masters in their own house — not the Syrians, not the Iranians, not the Israelis or Palestinians — nor indeed, despite the wholly misleading description in some quarters of Hariri’s bloc as “Western backed”, the Americans or the French. It is to be Lebanon for the Lebanese. And rightly so. Lebanon’s crises for the past three decades are in large part due to outside interference.
It was voters in the key Christian districts of Zahleh and Ashrafiyeh who won for Hariri although, on reflection, that should not have been so surprising. The Christians were one with Sunnis, the Druze and the Armenians in having the same vision of a free, sovereign Lebanon, able to stand up for itself in the Arab world and in the wider international community.
The vote is not the end of the story. The idea that Lebanon can now settle down to a peaceful new future is a fine hope but there are real problems ahead. The results may have provided an immediate boost to economic confidence in the country but they also give a picture of a seriously divided Lebanon: Shiites on one side; everyone else on the other. The reaction of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who has accepted the outcome is encouraging, so too that of Amal leader Nabih Berri who has praised Hariri and called for national unity. What is not encouraging is Hezbollah’s insistence it retain both its veto over the government and its independent army. Both have to go. Lebanon cannot be held hostage to the politics of a minority — and it is clear that Hariri, who now has a strong claim to be prime minister, plans something different. The worry, though, has to be that there will be those in Hezbollah, where there is no divide between military and political, who will argue that because they cannot win by the ballot, they must go back to the bullet. Not just within them but behind them. Those who have used Hezbollah and others, both as a means to manipulate the country and as a weapon against Israel (but for their own political purposes), are unlikely to give up simply because the Lebanese have declared their independence anew; they have known since the Cedar Revolution four years ago that they do not have the Lebanese people with them, but it did not stop them trying to terrorize the people into submission.
The people of Lebanon have made their choice. They have chosen freedom. Now it is Hezbollah’s turn. It has to decide whether it respects that choice and becomes a wholly civil political party or tries to retain its military muscle and links to outside interests. If it tries the latter, there will be trouble. But what also can be said following the election is that it will be the loser. There is a tide in the affairs of Lebanon, and it will not be stopped.
Labour in crisis: Change or die
THE Guardian in its editorial yesterday commented on the crisis gripping the Labour Party. Excerpts:
On a day in which a mild-mannered minister walked out of the government comparing its leadership to the “militant” tendency, even the most extraordinary facts about Labour's crisis seemed plausible. Behind the Tories in Wales? Sixth place, in Cornwall, trailing a small band of nationalists? Crushed by the Greens in Norwich? A national share of the vote below 20 percent for the first time since 1910? Vying with the Liberal Democrats for fourth place? In the huge southeast England Euro constituency Labour won just 8.2 percent, in territory that is, even now, represented by many Labour MPs.
Panic would be the right response to such results, followed by a determination to do things differently — but Labour’s world and the real world are now quite separate places, and the party may settle instead for more of the same. One wonders how bad the party’s election performance would have to be for its leaders to recognize the obvious — that the public want to throw them out of office and will do so with extreme force unless the party changes. Even now, those in charge are trying to blame external factors for the calamity: the expenses scandal and the dastardly Daily Telegraph, the recession, disloyal Blairites and indiscipline, racists and nationalists, the instant appeal of David Cameron ... the list of excuses is long and misguided. Labour’s leaders have reached a point once described by Bertolt Brecht: “The people have lost the confidence of the government; the government has decided to dissolve the people, and to appoint another one.”
Not all of the party's problems are Gordon Brown's fault, and his departure may not solve them. Labour needs to find unity and knows it would be easiest to do this by calling off the attacks on Brown. A rising economy might lift its vote. The rebels have no leader, and no agreed policy plan. But the public could not have made their views clearer. Labour must change, or it will die.
