Hezbollah boasts victory in Lebanese popular vote

Hizbullah is celebrating victory in the popular vote in Lebanon last Sunday, despite winning fewer seats in parliament than the ruling coalition. The opposition bloc, which encompasses the pro-Syrian Shi'ite Hizbullah, won 57 of the 128 parliament seats, but in the overall count gained nearly 55 percent of the popular vote compared to 45 percent won by the ruling coalition. Hizbullah leader Hassan Na'srallah has said he would accept the outcome of the election results and there are no indications that the results will be challenged. But opposition supporters are reminding the Lebanese that most of the voters cast a ballot in their favor. "The numbers speak for themselves," declares a report on Al-Manar, Hizbullah's mouthpiece. "The legislative election results show that the national opposition has retained a popular majority in Lebanon. The opposition still enjoys this majority, and the majority of parliament seats was only determined because of the way the election districts were divided." "The results show yet again that the Hizbullah-Amal alliance, in districts with a Shi'ite majority, won the support of more than 92% of the votes, which will certainly give an advantage in examining major issues such as national partnership and defense strategies," the Al-Manar report added. Members of the opposition have already insinuated they will not join the government unless they are given a third of the government seats and veto power on policy. But analysts say the results of the popular vote come as no surprise. "It's obvious why Na'srallah [would say] that, because he's questioning the validity of the Taif Agreement," says Prof. Eugene Richard Sensenig-Dabbous, a political scientist at Lebanon's Notre Dame University. The Taif Agreement, signed in 1989, ended a 15-year civil war. It stipulated that the parliament would be divided equally among Christians and Muslims, with 64 seats each and these are then subdivided among the largest of the country's religious sects. In a country fragmented by so many faiths, allocating fair representation is a complicated process. "Because the population is only one third Christian, a Christian seat is cheaper than a Muslim seat, which means that a Muslim vote is worth less than a Christian vote," Sensenig-Dabbous explained to The Media Line. According the Taif Agreement's power-sharing formula, Maronite Catholics get 34 seats, Greek Orthodox 14, Greek Catholics eight, Armenian Orthodox five, Armenian Catholics one, protestants one and another one for minorities. Muslims, Sunnis and Shi'ite get 27 seats each, Druze get eight and Alawites two. Sensenig-Dabbous said that although the Shi'ite population in Lebanon was growing, there were still a fixed number of Shi'ite seats in parliament. "This means you need more votes to become a Shi'ite MP than to become a Maronite MP or any other Christian group whose populations are stable or decreasing," he said. "A Western audience will say it doesn't sound fair but the whole purpose of minority protection is that you don't base it on numbers," he said. "You can question that but you're questioning the Taif Agreement, which means you're questioning the agreement that ended the civil war." The ruling majority of Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze won 71 seats, one fewer than in the 2005 elections. The March 8 Alliance, to which Hizbullah belongs, gained one seat more than in the previous elections.