Lebanon poll changes faces but not policies

Sunday's parliamentary election in Lebanon transformed the political landscape, but the new order is unlikely to make the changes the country needs to prosper. The administration of technocrats led by Dr Selim Hoss has been ousted. His predecessor, the construction magnate, Mr Rafiq Hariri, is expected to form a government of politicians when parliament reconvenes in mid-October. Although President Emile Lahoud, who will name the next prime minister, dislikes Mr Hariri and the two men seriously disagree on policies, both have spoken of "cohabitation".

Mr Hariri secured all the seats in the capital, Beirut, the key race. His allies in the Hizbollah-Amal electoral alliance, credited with liberating the south from Israel, took most seats in the south and east. Another ally, the Druze leader, Mr Walid Jumblatt, took most seats in Mount Lebanon.

The energetic and charismatic Mr Hariri won by campaigning hard, spending heavily (reputedly $50 million) and promising to restore Lebanon to its former glory as regional banking and business centre. Fortunately for him, the electorate forgot that his expensive reconstruction projects produced a $20 billion foreign debt and that his business associates had made money at state expense when he was prime minister, from 1992 to 1998. His bitter rival, Dr Hoss, lost because he failed to fix the troubled economy and weed out governmental and bureaucratic corruption. The mild-mannered Dr Hoss, a former university professor, also bored volatile voters.

But Mr Hariri is unlikely to do much better than Dr Hoss because Lebanon remains stuck in a 50-year time warp, and is dominated by the regional power broker, Syria.

The country's political life is dictated by a set of rules laid down just before independence in 1944. Those rules, amended in 1989 at the end of the second civil war, divide membership in the 128-seat parliament equally between Christians, now 30 per cent of the population, and Muslims. Sharing power among all 18 sectarian communities factionalises the body politic.

Within each sectarian community, politics is dominated by family clans and local bosses. Parliament is a feudal fiefdom for the sons, nephews and grandsons of the founding fathers of the state and prominent commercial families.

Finally, candidates attach themselves to constituency bosses who form electoral alliances of convenience.

Instead of trying to change the situation, the two newest political forces, the populist Mr Hariri and the Hizbollah movement, have succumbed to the system. Both also submit to Syria's will. Consequently, Lebanon's prospects for economic renewal, clean government, democratisation and independence have not been improved by this election. The more things [seem to] change in Lebanon, the more they remain the same.