Fisk: Washington Preferred that Hariri Comes out with a Clear Win

Government of 'national salvation' set to rule after "pro-Western MP Saad Hariri" failed to claim decisive victory, this is how prominent journalist Robert Fisk analyzed yesterday's parliamentary elections in Lebanon.

"There will, after yesterday's vote - for the Hizbullah-Christian coalition and for the secular Sunni-Christian alliance - be a government of "national salvation" in Beirut, run by an ex-army general-president with ever-increasing powers," Fisk wrote in British newspaper The Independent on Monday.

"Washington would have preferred that Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister, came out with a clear win. But out of the shadows will come the same crippled, un-healable Lebanon; delightful, unworkable, poor old Lebanon, corrupt, beautiful, vanity-prone, intelligent, democratic - yes, definitely, democratic - and absolutely outside our powers to reform," Fisk said.

"The electoral system - a crazed mixture of sectarianism, proportional representation and "list" fixing - means that no one ever really "wins" elections in Lebanon, and yesterday was no different. The "anti-Syrian" parties - the Sunnis, the Druze, half of the Christian community - made sure that their votes prevented a Hizbullah takeover, while the huge Shiaa vote - for Hizbullah and the Amal party and the Christians who follow the lead of the raving Christian ex-general Michael Aoun - made certain there would be no clear win for America's friends in the country," the writer added.

Fisk said that the Lebanese president, who under Lebanon's unwritten constitution must be a Christian Maronite, will be able to fashion some kind of "central bloc" by midday today - or so all Lebanon hopes - which will include Hizbullah, the forces of "anti-Syrian" Sunni Islam, the Druze and even the Christians. "The latter, always their own worst enemies in Lebanon, albeit a minority, will ironically be more powerful than ever because their president is one of them."