Much has been made of Lebanon’s elections and their supposedly “pro-Western” result. But viewing the election in binary terms would not only be reductionist, it risks squandering Lebanon’s potential to become a more pluralistic, equitable and stable country. If and when Lebanon progresses down this path, there will be important lessons to be learned by everybody from the US to India in terms of the failure of the state and the role of minorities.

Last week’s elections were certainly an important milestone in Lebanon’s (slow) journey beyond the narrow “confessionalisms” towards a debate on the conception of the Lebanese state and its functioning. But while they were hailed as conducted in a “free” manner, describing them as “fair” would stretch the word’s definition.

First some history: Lebanon emerged from civil war in 1990 with a deeply fractured society and a broken economy. Instead of using post-war peace for rapprochement amongst the country’s communities, then-PM Rafiq Hariri chose to lavish money and energy on rebuilding downtown Beirut, passing out contracts to a ruling elite. Not only did this neglect social infrastructure like health and education — in particular, for marginalised communities — but it also burdened the state with a debt/ GDP ratio currently estimated at 160 per cent, much of it external. And so Lebanon remains a highly stratified society with a government largely of the elite, for the elite and by the elite, ruling over an underclass with relatively little opportunity for upward mobility.

The Taif Accords which ended the civil war also institutionalised a perverse electoral framework. It not only distributes seats according to religious denomination but also stipulates office-holders’ religious identity: the president can only be Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister Sunni, etc. Thus despite being almost 40 per cent of the population by some estimates, Lebanon’s Shi’as get only 25 per cent of Parliament and cannot aspire to anything more than being its speaker.

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