Lebanon’s Gemayel: A Leader Looks Around, Sees No One Following

One of the many cynical jokes about Amin Gemayel that are making the rounds of Christian households here has the beleaguered president of Lebanon being confronted in his office by his son, demanding that he sign a school report card.

According to the story, the 43-year-old Gemayel offers a series of lame excuses to avoid signing and, when the boy becomes insistent, the president finally blurts out:

“Why do you humiliate me? Don’t you know I can’t sign anything without asking Damascus?”

The jokes reflect more than the obvious Christian unease over Gemayel’s turn away from the West and his new and close relationship with President Hafez Assad of Syria. They show a clear slump in popularity for Gemayel, a Maronite Catholic, among Lebanon’s 1.4 million Christians, the community where his support should in theory be the strongest.

Along with Gemayel’s declining popularity, the last six months have seen one intifada-- Arabic for uprising--after another, and they have brought about the most fundamental realignment of power in the Christian community since Lebanon obtained its independence from France in 1946.

Since early in Gemayel’s presidential term, which began on Sept. 23, 1982, non-Christian leaders like Nabih Berri, head of the Shia Muslim Amal militia, and Walid Jumblatt, the Druze chieftain, have attacked his rule with everything from rhetoric to rockets fired literally into the presidential dining room.

Now, Christian leaders who were formerly slavish in their support are openly critical of the president’s policies and style. They speak of a new, limited role for Gemayel after the apparent loss of his mandate as Christian spokesman.

“Gemayel has been reduced to a titular president,” said Dany Chamoun, a Christian and the son of former President Camille Chamoun. The younger Chamoun recently took control of his aged father’s tiny National Liberal Party after a bitter factional fight.

According to a close adviser to the president, virtually every major decision must now be ratified by the Syrian government, which often suggests changes that carry the clear implication of a directive.

Mired in Minutiae

Thus relieved of his most important executive responsibilities and his leadership of the Christians, Gemayel spends most of his time--75% by one estimate--mired in the minutiae of keeping Lebanon’s government structure afloat.

Dividing his time between suburban Baabda, site of the presidential palace--a target for frequent shelling by the Muslims--and a summer home in what used to be the city hall at Bikfaya, the Gemayel family seat, the president reportedly has developed an obsession for working and listening to classical music. An aide said he often listens to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony 10 times a day.

“In the present circumstances, it’s clear that he could not rule as he has been ruling,” said Joseph Abou Khalil, a close friend and supporter of Gemayel’s.

Gemayel’s declining fortunes have paralleled those of the Falangist Party, which had been one of the most powerful Christian political organizations in Lebanon since its founding, in the 1930s, by the president’s late father, Pierre Gemayel.

No Longer Ruling Party

Alfred Mady, a member of the Falangist Party’s governing political bureau, conceded in an interview recently that “we are no longer the ruling party that everybody says we were.”

Karim Pakradouni, another Christian politician, said: “We are witnessing the marginalization of Amin Gemayel. Amin has become an arbiter between all the communities, and he’s no longer the leader of the Maronites (Christians). The Falange Party no longer represents the Christians. It has lost its political power.”

Pakradouni might properly be accused of being partial, since he is the leading ideologue in the Lebanese Forces, formerly the Falangist Party’s military arm but which has developed an independent and rival political base of its own.

“The Lebanese Forces has the military power; it has cemented its position, and it’s a real party,” said a Western diplomat who lives in mostly Christian East Beirut.

Founded by Brother

Significantly, the Lebanese Forces were founded by Amin’s younger brother, Bashir, who was as charismatic and popular as Amin has appeared awkward and withdrawn in public.

Bashir was assassinated in September, 1982, just days after being elected president of Lebanon. Although Amin was quickly chosen to succeed him, the loyalty of the Lebanese Forces to Amin has always been in doubt.

Drawing on the current anti-Amin mood in the Christian community, the leader of a rival Christian clan, former President Suleiman Franjieh, has called for Gemayel’s removal.

“The head of state is sick,” said Franjieh, who has maintained close ties with Damascus himself, “and the only way for Lebanon to become healthy again is by cutting off this head.”

No Substitute Candidate

Few other Christian leaders are seriously urging Gemayel’s resignation, if for no other reason than that no substitute candidate has presented himself.

Syria continues to treat Gemayel with such cordiality that--as a Western diplomat remarked--when he visits Damascus these days he gets a warmer welcome there than at home.

But the Syrians have also been careful to receive other Christian leaders, such as the Lebanese Forces leader, Elie Hobeika, who visited Damascus on Sept. 9. They are making it clear that Gemayel, while a valued friend, is not indispensable, according to one diplomat.

Gemayel is said by friends to be deeply wounded by all the personal criticism that has surfaced. But, in public, at least, he has remained feistily attached to his job.

“I take full responsibility, not because I’m in love with this chair or presidential palace,” Gemayel was quoted as having told a local Muslim newspaper.

Term Expires in 1986

“I won’t abandon the presidency, for various reasons, not the least of which is to safeguard the country’s unity and legitimacy. I’ll leave the presidential palace only when I’m dead or when my term expires in September, 1986.”

In part, Gemayel has been the victim of circumstances, being blamed unfairly by many Christians for the collapse of Lebanon’s war-shattered economy.

A visitor can hardly conduct a conversation with a shopkeeper in East Beirut without being reminded that the Lebanese pound was traded at four to the U.S. dollar when Gemayel took office three years ago. It is now around 19 to the dollar.

But the biggest problem has been the Christian community’s gradual rejection of the president’s traditional role as Christian spokesman.

Under Lebanon’s so-called confessional system, now near collapse under pressure from the Syrians and Muslim reformers, the Lebanese president has always been a Maronite Christian, just as the premier has always been a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of Parliament has always been a Shia Muslim.

Beginning of Split

Beginning with the death in August, 1984, of Pierre Gemayel, who through force of personality had managed to unite the Falangist Party and the Christian militia behind his son, Christians were increasingly split over Amin Gemayel’s attempts to speak for them.

“Amin was trying to be everything at once,” said Elias Murr, editor of a new Christian newspaper called Al Jumhuriya (The Republic). “He was playing the part of president of all Lebanon, head of the Falange, and general of the Lebanese Forces. It was too much.”

The controversy came to a head in March, when Gemayel accepted a Syrian demand that the Lebanese Forces remove a checkpoint--literally a toll bridge--on the Beirut-Tripoli coastal highway. When the leaders of the Lebanese Forces refused, Gemayel had them dismissed from the Falangist Party.

But, rather than back down, the maverick Lebanese Forces leaders carried out a military uprising, seizing control of most of the Christian heartland. Led by Samir Geagea, a former medical student who is regarded here as a mystic, the militia leaders declared that they had acted to protect what they called “the independence of the Christian decision.”

Geagea was replaced two months later by Elie Hobeika, a former bank employee with a handlebar mustache whose name has been linked frequently with the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian militiamen in 1982 at two camps south of Beirut.

A former head of the Lebanese Forces’ intelligence office, Hobeika, 28, is almost obsessively private, never gives interviews and remains a mystery politically.

Gemayel suffered another blow in July, when the Falangist Party agreed to merge its last 2,000 militiamen, known as the Toweri (Emergency), with the 9,000-strong Lebanese Forces militia.

Al Amal, the Falangist newspaper, described the merger as the removal of a potential Christian flashpoint. “The nightmare that was weighing heavily on the chests of the people of East Beirut has been lifted,” Al Amal said.

Military Power Lost, Too

But Gemayel had clearly backed down rather than risk a confrontation with the powerful Lebanese Forces. As Pakradouni described it: “In March, Amin lost his political power in the first intifada. In July, his military power disappeared as well.”

Gemayel’s emasculation is so complete that the Lebanese Forces this month took over the operation of the Falangist radio station, the Voice of Lebanon, without a whimper from the Falangist Party.

Gemayel’s most controversial action as president is likely to remain his decision to loosen Lebanon’s close ties with the United States in favor of Syria’s proffered embrace.

At one moment, Gemayel was threatening to drop bombs on Damascus and referring to the Syrian occupation troops in eastern Lebanon as the “forces of darkness.”

Gemayel’s Turnabout

By March, 1984, he had done a complete turnabout, responding to Syrian pressure by canceling the May 17, 1983, troop-withdrawal agreement between Lebanon and Israel that had been negotiated under U.S. auspices.

“He was very bitter toward the United States, and he still is,” an aide said. “He made the mistake of thinking the United States had done its homework with Syria.”

Syria’s eventual role in Lebanon is as yet undefined, but many members of the Christian community are leery of embracing Damascus too closely.

In August, artillery shells rained down on Christian towns formerly regarded as immune from attack. The artillery, fired by Shia Muslim Amal forces based in Syrian-controlled areas, was widely interpreted here as a stern warning to the Lebanese Forces that they would not be allowed to scuttle Syria’s progress toward a settlement.