there's a fair amount of coverage of the victory of michael aoun's candidate in the lebanese special parliamentary election. the special election was called because pierre gemayel was assassinated and they needed to fill his seat. pierre gemayel's father, amin gemayel, a former president of lebanon, was running to fill his son's seat.
what's interesting about the coverage in this country is how it's viewed entirely through the prism of the hezbollah-march 14th coalition divide. the "march 14th coalition" is the western-backed coalition that currently rules lebanon (march 14th refers to march 14, 2005, the date of the "cedar revolution" of street protests that were triggered by the assassination of rafik hariri and resulted in the end of the syrian occupation of the country). that coalition has been in a standoff with hezbollah over the proportion of power-sharing in the lebanese government ever since hezbollah was empowered by its "victory" last year over israel. the stand-off has dragged on for months, settling into an effective stalemate that has completely paralyzed the lebanese government.
the march 14th coalition is dominated by lebanese christians. but michael aoun is a christian who is allied with hezbollah. his candidates victory in the special parliamentary election takes a seat away from the march 14th coalition, further weakening it in its standoff with hezbollah.
but there's another angle to the election story. when gemayel started doing badly during the election campaign, lashed out with racist attacks against the country's armenian-lebanese. the armenians threw their support to general aoun, which apparently delivered his narrow victory. as the angry arab notes, this aspect of the race seems to be completely missing from western coverage of the election. most of what i see is slanted quite clearly in favor of the march 14th coalition. i guess a racist tirade doesn't fit with the modern pro-western image that the foreign press has cultivated.
