Jumblat Strikes Again

Walid Jumblat may be starting to distance himself from some parts of the opposition.


"The Opposition's demands have been met", this is what Walid Jumblat announced after visiting P.M designate Omar Karami in his Ramlet el Baida residence, effectively ending the "contract" he had with the opposition.

Despite the Grand-sounding statements of unity made by now-defensive opposition members, Jumblat is clearly beginning to differentiate his stances. To the chagrin of the Quornet Shahwan gathering, he began by downplaying the need for disarming Hizbullah in the short run, he then ignored the opposition's boycotting of Karami and he is now supporting an electoral law based on districts instead of Qazas.

Quornet Shahwan is already crying foul: Gebran Tueni of Annahar was warning yesterday against a district-based electoral law and Edmond Saab (Annahar's executive editor in chief) has derided Jumblat today for "leaving the bus before attaining its final destination", but did Jumblat really backstab the opposition?

While some pundits speak of Jumblat's latest moves as necessary tactics to co-opt the loyalists and deprive them of excuses, it is not entirely unimaginable that Jumblat would just re-examine his alliances based on new givens.

From Jumblat's point of view, the opposition would be a united front as long as the Syrians are in Lebanon and as long as Hariri’s murderers remain unreachable. Both these demands have now been irreversibly met: The Syrians are leaving for good and UN resolution 1595 (demanding a far-reaching investigation into Hariri's murder) is now in place.
Why should Jumblat be bound by a "deal" made between president Lahhoud and Patriarch Sfeir regarding the electoral law? Jumblat never liked Lahhoud anyway.

Jumblat's position now is starting to look more like that of the future movement: chummy with the opposition but with a centrist and independent streak. Fares Khasshan of Hariri-owned Almustaqbal Newspaper defends Jumblat no too convincingly, saying his latest moves are because he wanted to fill the void. If that is the case, why didn't he talk with his partners in the opposition about it?

Nobody knows what Walid Jumblat is up to, but his recent cozying up to the Bush administration and its intellectual establishment could offer us a clue. The weekly standard (the NeoCons' main weekly) had said that he knows which way the wind is blowing.

I wonder what he would be thinking, watching that other minority-leader elected president of a newly-democratized Arab neighbor...