Michael Young

Needless to say, Saad Hariri’s decision to open channels to Sleiman Franjieh over the presidency has caused disarray in the ranks of Maronite politicians. The possibility that Franjieh might emerge as a consensus candidate has shaken the precarious equilibrium in place for 18 months.

There were many reasons for Hariri’s calculation, not least that Lebanon is at the limits of what it can endure in terms of domestic instability. The government is not functioning, the economy is rapidly nearing a red zone, and the war in Syria is having an ever more dangerous impact on the Lebanese scene.

Accepting Franjieh poses a major test for what remains of March 14, an alliance in name only. Samir Geagea virtually announced his withdrawal from the coalition when he began a dialogue with Michel Aoun several months ago. The Kataeb Party has long taken a more independent tack from March 14, and has maintained open channels to Franjieh for some time. And Future has been engaged in a dialogue with Hezbollah, making it far more difficult for the smaller March 14 parties, especially the Christians, to oppose one with Franjieh.

Moreover, Hariri’s task in an eventual bargain to elect Franjieh may not automatically entail much. The former prime minister could merely choose to order his bloc to attend an election session, allowing a quorum, without asking it to vote in favor of Franjieh. Or, Hariri could let his parliamentarians vote as they choose. Either way, it would be up to Franjieh to secure votes from his political allies – Michel Aoun and the Shiite parties – and hope that Walid Jumblatt’s votes carry him over the top.

Yet that doesn’t seem to be the most credible scenario. How Aoun will react is questionable and Walid Jumblatt may be unable to persuade all the Christians and Sunnis in his bloc to vote for Franjieh. It goes without saying a green light from Saudi Arabia would change everything in this regard.

This raises the question of whether the Hariri-Franjieh contacts came after coordination with the Saudis. It’s very difficult to imagine that Hariri would have taken the initiative to meet with Franjieh over the presidential vacuum without prior consultations with Riyadh. And if the Saudis were in on the deliberations, then one presumes others were too. President Barack Obama’s remarks on Tuesday appealing to the Lebanese to elect a president must have been linked to this.

Franjieh is well aware of what is going on and has been careful to avoid burning his bridges with anyone. He has acknowledged that Saudi approval is needed for him to be elected; he has been quoted as saying that a president has to maintain good ties with all sides, a way of saying he cannot allow his friendship with Assad to become an obstacle to his way of governing; and he has affirmed that he continues to support Aoun’s candidacy, to avoid breaking with the general if his own election is thwarted.

Aoun is in a bind. He’s an ally of Franjieh yet a Franjieh presidency targets him more than anyone – and by extension his son in law, Gebran Bassil, who probably hoped to emerge as Hezbollah’s favorite if Aoun was unable to pursue his candidacy. The general reacted ambiguously, saying Franjieh had the qualities to be president and that he would support him if he garnered enough votes to win.

Since it is improbable that Aoun’s bloc will commit to voting for Franjieh instead of Aoun, at least before an election is held, that means Franjieh must secure a majority from elsewhere. In other words he would need to have the prior support of Future, Jumblatt, Hezbollah and Nabih Berri. Given the headache this may create for Hariri in March 14 and the fact that Franjieh will hesitate to enter a presidential contest against Aoun, Aoun’s proposal was an effective veto.

Yet the myriad complications with a Franjieh election in no way necessarily doom his chances. Recall that Hariri endorsed Michel Sleiman in November 2007, when March 14 still regarded the former army commander as Syria’s man. Yet he won, was not a Syrian agent, and the episode vindicated Hariri’s willingness to take risks to break a damaging deadlock.

For Franjieh’s chances to improve he would need to gain the public support of Hariri and receive a clear signal from Hezbollah that it will back him. Franjieh will also need to work hard to reconcile with his Christian adversaries, above all Samir Geagea, while avoiding doing so in such a way that would alienate Aoun. In this regard the Maronite patriarch, Bishara al-Rai, can play a vital role in bringing the different sides together, while endorsing a Franjieh candidacy under certain conditions.

This makes it far less likely that Future would help bring in Franjieh simply by allowing a quorum in Parliament. Instead, Hariri knows that for such a project to be real, he will need to persuade his bloc and his allies to vote for Franjieh.

If Franjieh is elected, it will not be like his grandfather, who secured the presidency by a single vote in 1970. Geagea on the one side and Aoun on the other will be unhappy, and many Christians will be dissatisfied to see the major Sunni and Shiite parties having a decisive say in deciding which Maronite becomes president. Their error was, perhaps, to assume that a president can be elected any other way in today’s Lebanon.