LEBANON: Election Under Fire

Bitter new fighting erupted in Lebanon late last week after Lebanese parliamentarians braved mortar fire from leftist forces to elect a new President to replace Suleiman Franjieh, the embattled Christian leader who two weeks ago conditionally agreed to step down. Fran-jieh’s replacement had been a major leftist condition for negotiations to end the 13-month-old civil war between Christians and Moslems, which has taken 16,000 lives. But fearing that Elias Sarkis, the Syrian-backed candidate, would win the election, Moslem forces launched a last-ditch effort to prevent the voting.

Shortly before the Parliament was to convene on Saturday morning, artillery and machine-gun fire reverberated throughout the capital of Beirut. House Speaker Kamal Asaad was forced to drive to the session guarded by a six-truck convoy of troops; other Deputies were escorted by gunmen from their own local militias. The Mediterranean villa that serves as a temporary Parliament itself came under heavy fire—though no one was hurt. Still, the fighting failed to deter a quorum of 69 out of 98 members of Parliament from convening. While mortars exploded all around, Sarkis, 51, who is governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank, won the presidency on the second ballot, after having failed to get the requisite two-thirds majority on the first ballot.

Respected Technocrat. Like Franjieh, who had supported his election, Sarkis is from the Maronite Christian community, which has dominated Lebanon’s government and economy since the country became independent at the end of World War II. A respected technocrat who has been described as a “rightist with socialist ideas,” he is credited, as head of the Central Bank, with restoring confidence in the country’s banking system after the Intra Bank crash of 1966. A candidate in the last presidential election in 1970, Sarkis lost to Franjieh by only one vote.

Much as Leftist Leader Kamal Jumblatt and his National Movement wanted Franjieh out of the presidency, they feared Sarkis’ election because of his reputed receptiveness to an increased Syrian military presence to restore order in Lebanon. After succeeding in getting the election postponed for one week, Jumblatt and his choice for President, Raymond Edde, 63, a Christian who had opposed Syrian intervention, kept up a running drumfire last week to delay the election until what they called Syrian “pressure” to secure Sarkis’ election had ended. When they failed to halt the proceedings, both Edde and his supporters boycotted the session.

The week began with heavy fighting in the Beirut port area. Leftist forces launched an offensive aimed at seizing tall buildings from which their guns could dominate the harbor, now held by Christian fighters. For a brief time in midweek, it looked as if the two sides had decided to put down their guns and stop fighting in a spontaneous ceasefire. While red-bereted Palestine Liberation Army troops took up positions in a buffer zone between the warring factions, Moslem and Christian soldiers met and drank beer together and even played a little football.

But all too soon it became clear that neither football nor a new face at the helm was going to be enough to end the bloodletting. That would only come with a political solution satisfactory to all. With that in mind, Syrian President Hafez Assad conferred late last week with Jordan’s King Hussein, who has backed Syria’s attempts to get a ceasefire. Franjieh, meanwhile, revealed that he had been working on a plan whereby the U.S., France, Syria and Saudi Arabia would guarantee a settlement. Whether Sarkis will proceed with that plan remains an open question.