Lebanese presidential candidate faces challenges

While other Wilson School professors are focused on analyzing the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries, Chibli Mallat has his sights set on a presidential election half a world away.

Mallat, a leading Middle Eastern human rights lawyer and a visiting senior research scholar at the Wilson School, is running for president of Lebanon, a country where an ongoing crisis threatens to derail the fall elections.

"I think there is a very great risk in the elections," Mallat said in his Bendheim Hall office, where he spends between three to four hours a day working on campaign-related issues. "But we have to support the necessity of them going forward; otherwise we end up in an even more serious constitutional crisis than we have at the present."

Lebanon's constitution mandates that the country's cabinet represent all the nation's religious groups, a state of affairs that has not existed since the resignation of five Shiite Hezbollah members and the sole Christian.

Mallat described his campaign as focusing less on political alliances and fundraising, and instead seeking an open dialogue concerning the most pressing issues facing Lebanon today.

"I'm in principle supportive of talk, even with your rival or your enemy," Mallat said. "I don't think that talking in itself can ever be a negative endeavor."

A new wave of change

Mallat said his chief interest in running for president is to fill a critical void in the leadership of the Cedar Revolution, a wave of activism triggered by the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who sought the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Mallat is convinced there is a need for a different type of leadership throughout the Middle East and that the president of Lebanon can serve as a catalyst for that change.

The current crisis came to a head this summer when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, eliciting a massive military response from Israel that devastated many of the neighborhoods in southern Beirut. Israel had hoped its military response would put a large dent in Hezbollah's operational capacity, but the organization emerged emboldened and the popularity of its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, skyrocketed.

Mallat now has to contend with Nasrallah's growing influence. Though Mallat has been highly critical of the Hezbollah leader's actions, he said it is important not to isolate Nasrallah, but to engage him in dialogue instead. "One needs to talk with Hezbollah," Mallat said. "[The current political deadlock] cannot go on with this guy hiding in his cave like Osama bin Laden and not appearing," he added.

Mallat has found that running for presidency of Lebanon has entailed facilitating a dialogue that extends beyond Lebanese politics to address a plethora of issues facing the entire Middle East.

Running against the tide

Mallat has kept a low profile in the last year out of concern for his own safety. Lebanon has a long history of political assassinations, and no political candidate seems to be immune from the threat.

"In a sense, I've sought shelter in Princeton," he said. "Of course, [the threat of political assassination] is always a concern. That's the main reason I'm here."

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But he said that the decision to temporarily leave Beirut was not an easy one. "Who wants to leave one's country? You never do it unless there are ... very grave reasons."

Mallat said that confirmation his campaign is making a difference came during a visit to Beirut three weeks ago. "It was amazing the embrace that I had from people I did not know," adding that it was encounters like these that reassured him that "there is a demand for something different."