Two cheers for democracy... in Lebanon

Hariri... Hariri... Ha...

The Globe and Mail reports:

The good news:

Saad Hariri, the son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, swept parliamentary elections in Lebanon's capital, according to official results announced Monday for the country's first elections held largely free of Syrian domination.

Riding a sympathy vote, candidates led by Mr. Hariri won all 19 seats in the Beirut polls. The election is seen as a tribute to the leader whose February assassination triggered international anger and street protests that ultimately drove the Syrian army out of Lebanon...

Mr. Hariri was the biggest vote-getter, collecting 39,499 votes -- five times the distant loser in one constituency.

The bad news:

But turnout was low, at about 27 per cent of the 473,652 eligible voters, compared with 35 per cent in the 2000 parliamentary elections.

The weak turnout reflected public dissatisfaction amid calls for a boycott, complaints that the ticket of Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, lacked representation of political factions, and the lack of challengers in some constituencies. Television stations reported the boycott was strong in Christian areas.

The reaction:

Many observers expect the polls, the first free of Syrian meddling in 29 years, to sweep the anti-Syrian opposition to power and install a new parliament, removing the last vestiges of Damascus' control.

The vote was watched closely by the United States and other outside governments that pushed for a Syrian troop withdrawal and on-time elections, despite an election law widely described as unfair...

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the UN chief was encouraged by the democratic conduct of the first round of the Lebanese parliamentary elections and hoped the remaining rounds would take place in the same peaceful atmosphere.

“These elections constitute a major opportunity for the Lebanese people to shape their own future, to strengthen their political institutions and to restore their full sovereignty,” Mr. Annan said in a statement.

More than 100 observers from the European Union and the United Nations watched the vote for irregularities, the first time Lebanon has permitted foreign scrutiny.

“I see it as a potential for a new start,” said U.S. Senator Joseph Biden, who came to watch the balloting.

The lesson:

Biden is right. It's a potential for a new start, not in and of itself a new start. This was obviously a sympathy vote for Hariri, at least in part, and the low voter turnout and boycott calls reflect widespread dissatisfaction even after the Syrian withdrawal. In the West, we are so accustomed to democracy -- that is, we take it so much for granted -- that we think of it as somehow natural (even if liberal political philosophy, based on Hobbes and Locke, presumes precisely the unnaturalness of democracy -- we are nasty and brutish by nature, not democratic voters). In this case, the removal of Syrian occupation was seen as a necessary first step towards a democratic Lebanon. That's true, of course. Lebanon was never going to be free under such tyrannical rule. But democracy itself doesn't necessarily flourish in the absence of tyranny. Rather, its long-term viability depends on its taking root and, over time, developing legitimacy, especially where it has little to no history. It had centuries to develop in the West. It needs more than a preliminary election in Beirut to take hold in Lebanon.

Nonetheless, Hariri's victory is a positive sign that democracy will in fact succeed in Lebanon. But it won't do so just because there is no longer any foreign occupier, and we would do well not to take its inevitable success for granted. On the contrary, it needs to be nourished -- as in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. Democratic rhetoric is often, these days, Hegelian rhetoric: democracy as the end of history. Even President Bush has succumbed to such facile Hegelianism (see his Second Inaugural). But there is nothing inevitable about democracy, however much we may wish there were, and it is up to us, in the West, to promote its virtues and to encourage its success in historically non-democratic parts of the world.

There is much potential in Lebanon. Let's make sure it becomes reality.