Lebanon's Election: Free but Not Fair

In America, Mahmoud felt as though his vote mattered. Here, he doesn't. "I'm 50 years old, and I've never voted in my own country," he says, with a sad laugh. "With this system now, I think my votes will be insignificant."

I see the results of this disenfranchisement every week. In the summer, when Beirut's seaside breeze turns to a steamy blast, the Electricite du Liban stops bringing electricity to the dahiya, as it does every summer. The people turn to ishtiraq, literally Arabic for "subscription": You pay a fee to some neighborhood Croesus who owns a generator. Look up, anywhere in the dahiya, and you'll see the sky through a snarl of electrical wires that siphon ishtiraq from one concrete-block building to another.

Enter Hezbollah -- a political machine for people left out of the political system. The party's special status as an armed faction is the Shiites' de facto consolation prize for being disenfranchised. For Lebanon's underrepresented Shiite plurality, guns are the great equalizers: Arms and money flow through Syria from Iran, which is believed to finance the militant group to the tune of millions of dollars per month. In the dahiya and southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has become a powerful shadow government, building a network of schools, hospitals and charities.

The consensus outside Lebanon is that Hezbollah should disarm, as required by United Nations Resolution 1559, and take its place in Lebanon's evolving democracy. But the question is, how? In the endless horse trade of Lebanese politics, Hezbollah will want something in exchange for surrendering its arms. If the party stops being Iran's gun-for-hire against Israel, it stands to lose not just political power, but millions in subsidy. Hezbollah won't consent to giving all that up while Lebanon's political deck is stacked so heavily against Shiites.

The Bush administration seems to be waiting until after the elections to address the Hezbollah issue. But the upcoming elections are a rare opportunity: If Bush wants to help Lebanon disarm Hezbollah peacefully -- and if he wants to deserve his reputation as a liberator of the Arab world's downtrodden Shiites -- he'll encourage Lebanon's Christians to give up their special privileges. And if Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is the pragmatist he's reputed to be, he'll accept ballots and a census in exchange for his rocket launchers.

The Taif Accord, the 1989 agreement that has governed Lebanon since the civil war, requires the country to abolish the confessional system. So far, very few politicians have made any sincere attempt to do so. But the Lebanese people feel differently. A recent Zogby poll showed that 63 percent wanted to abolish the troika, and 69 percent wanted the president to be elected in a one-person, one-vote poll, instead of being chosen, as he is now, by parliament. Not surprisingly, Maronites were divided on both questions, while Muslims clearly preferred a secular system. A new Lebanese civil society group, Hayyabina (meaning "Let's go"), recently called for a referendum to end religious affirmative action. The Bush administration and the United Nations should support them -- not only because it might help disarm Hezbollah, but because it's the democratic thing to do.

Meanwhile, politicians are plastering their grinning faces all over most of Beirut. But in the dahiya, few bother: Most people who live there can't vote there anyway. Many of them plan to sit out the elections -- my mother-in-law included.

Would she vote if she could do it close to home, in Beirut? She can't quite believe the question: "What do you think this is?" she asks sardonically, picking up our dishes. "America?"

Author's e-mail:

anniaciezadlo-outlook@yahoo.com

Annia Ciezadlo is a Beirut-based freelance writer who has reported from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the New Republic and the Christian Science Monitor.