BKERKE, LEBANON — Almost every hour, it seems, another motorcade of bulletproof vehicles arrives at the fortified monastery here high in the mountains above Beirut. Two days ago, it was U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman; yesterday, it was an envoy of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Before, after and in between come a steady stream of representatives from Lebanon's myriad political factions.
They all come to ask the diminutive 87-year-old man who lives behind the building's white-stone walls the same thing: to intervene, somehow, and reverse Lebanon's dangerous slide toward further division and perhaps civil war.
With just two weeks remaining in President Emile Lahoud's term in office, this heavily armed country is deeply divided over both who should succeed him and how that person should be chosen. Many believe that Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, the Maronite Christian patriarch, is the only man who can possibly broker a compromise that avoids violence. But with time ticking down, he doesn't sound optimistic.“The situation we are going through now is worse than what it was 30 years ago,” he said this week, referring to the political crises that spiralled into the 1975-1990 civil war and left an estimated 100,000 people dead. Sounding angry and frustrated after another fruitless round of diplomacy, the patriarch warned that “some are saying the Lebanese will try to use arms to settle matters.”
The country's power-sharing constitution decrees that the president must always be a Maronite, a provision that was supposed to protect the community's privileged status in this predominantly Muslim country. But the Christian community is internally split, divided between supporters of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's pro-Western government and those allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition, which believes that Mr. Lahoud's successor must be, as Mr. Lahoud is, an ally of Syria and committed to maintaining Hezbollah's status as an armed “resistance” group dedicated to fighting neighbouring Israel.
Lebanon's parliament has already tried twice to elect a new president, only to delay the vote each time because no candidate has the necessary two-thirds support in the 128-seat chamber. It is scheduled to try again on Monday. Few expect they'll be able to do anything more than defer the vote again, moving the country closer to the unknown that comes after Mr. Lahoud's term ends at the stroke of midnight on Nov. 23.
“The biggest danger is a presidential void. [Mr. Siniora's] government is not recognized by the opposition, and the opposition is considering starting a second government. That means the division of the country,” Archbishop Paul Youssef Matar, the head of the Maronite church in Beirut and a close confidante of Patriarch Sfeir, said in an interview. The Maronites are an Eastern Catholic Church, in full communion with the Vatican.
The pro-Western governing coalition, which holds a simple majority in parliament, has repeatedly threatened to choose a president from among its own ranks. The opposition has suggested it could respond to such a move by seizing control of key institutions and setting up a rival administration.
The two sides have been at odds since last summer's war between Hezbollah and neighbouring Israel, with each party accusing the other of bringing Lebanon to ruin by allowing foreign powers to dictate the country's destiny. Hezbollah suspended its participation in the government a year ago, and has paralyzed the centre of Beirut with non-stop anti-government protests that have continued for the past 11 months.
Archbishop Matar said that all sides but one – including “the Shiites,” meaning Hezbollah – have asked Patriarch Sfeir to resolve the crisis by naming his favoured candidate. He said the only Lebanese uninterested in such intervention are the various Maronite politicians promoting themselves as the next president.
Chief among them is General Michel Aoun, a former president who returned in 2005 from 15 years in exile, only to stun his erstwhile allies by siding with Hezbollah in the current power struggle. Archbishop Matar said the crux of the current problem is that the pro-Western camp refuses to accept Gen. Aoun as president, while Gen. Aoun, citing polls that show he's far more popular than any other Christian leader, is unwilling to withdraw his nomination.
“The church is trying to get the Maronites to come to an accord among ourselves, but it's difficult,” Archbishop Matar said. He said Patriarch Sfeir isn't keen to intervene directly, fearing it would seem anti-democratic for the church to get so deeply involved in politics. It's also unclear how any endorsement would be received by other presidential aspirants. But pressure is growing for the patriarch to do something bold, the archbishop said.
“Until now, the patriarch has not [named any candidates] because he says it's an affair of the parliament. What he'll do in the next 15 days is up for debate.”
Patriarch Sfeir, who throughout his 21 years at the head of the church has opposed neighbouring Syria's influence over Lebanon, is believed to sympathize with the pro-Western camp.
But he has repeatedly said that he would like to see a neutral president “who is at equal distance from all the parties” and has reportedly drawn up an informal list of four or five relatively unknown candidates he thinks might be acceptable to both sides.
He's expected to quietly present the list to the various faction leaders, hoping one of them will get the approval of parliament and avert a showdown.
“One way or the other, it's all on Patriarch Sfeir now. He's the centre of any compromise,” said Farid Chedid, an independent political analyst. “But it will be very hard for him to achieve something. The possibility for compromise in Lebanon is very weak.”
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