Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Saad Hariri triumphs in Beirut vote

A couple of months ago, Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated former Primer minister Rafik Hariri, was known only as a young highly successful businessman in Saudi Arabia, taking care of the empire built by his father. Today, he is on the verge of becoming next Lebanon’s prime minister, nothing less! The bloc of candidates he led won all City of Beirut’s seats in the first elections held in Lebanon after Syrian troops left the country.
As this article points out, Saad Hariri’s list was a strong one. By including among others such prominent forces as Hezbollah and some Christian parties, the chances of losing were quite slim. This kind of coalition built around a wide spectrum of political and ethnical parties shows that this country is much ahead in the Arab world as far as the game of politics and democracy is concerned. The war that devastated the country is certainty one of the reasons for that. Less flattering though, is the fact that Hariri’s campaign rhetoric was mainly an emotional one, being heavily associated with his father “martyrdom”. Worse, the fact that Saad Hariri is keen in becoming the prime minister, although he is a novice in politics, without any experience whatsoever, and the fact that the nation does not seem to oppose what would be an amazing shift in Saad’s career, shows, in my opinion, the fragility of Lebanon’s democracy.