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Lebanon's government by murder
Real estate news By David Schenker
October 17, 2007
Forty Lebanese members of parliament belonging to the pro-Western, anti-Syria March 14th majority bloc currently reside in Tower 3 at Beirut's Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel. With plush couches, stereos and flat-screen TVs, the two-bedroom units at the Phoenicia are swank. But the lawmakers aren't guests; they're prisoners. To get into the Phoenicia, you have to traverse no fewer than three security checkpoints, pass through a metal detector and show ID. Armed escorts from Lebanon's Internal Security Forces accompany guests to their rooms. Inside, curtains are permanently drawn to discourage snipers from targeting the MPs. One confined parliament member described the setup as "Abu Ghraib."
As the isolation of these legislators suggests, the March 14th bloc is taking its security seriously, and with good reason. Since 2005, four members of parliament affiliated with this bloc have been assassinated in Beirut. These killings, the death by natural causes of one MP and the political defection of yet another have sorely depleted the ranks of the majority. A government that once had 72 out of 128 legislators now rules by a razor-thin margin of 68 of 127 seats. The Bashar Assad regime in Syria is widely assumed to be behind the campaign of assassination. Its goal is to weaken, supplant or intimidate the democratically elected government in Beirut and thus end the international tribunal that will almost certainly implicate Damascus in the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Presidential elections -- which began on Sept. 25 and run through Nov. 25 -- have only increased the threat to the majority. The president in Lebanon is elected by parliament, and the majority has made clear that although it would prefer to choose by consensus, it will elect the chief executive by a simple majority if no acceptable compromise candidate can be found. The Hezbollah-led, Syrian-backed opposition says it will not recognize a non-consensus president. For its part, Damascus has stipulated that the next Lebanese president should be moqawam, i.e., a supporter of Hezbollah, and "of Arab belonging," i.e., pro-Syrian. Should the Syrians and the opposition succeed in either toppling the government by attrition or installing a crony like outgoing President Emile Lahoud, the tribunal could be delayed if not derailed.
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