EGYPT - The Lebanon Experience.

In the cat-and-mouse game of democracy between Bush and Mubarak, the Egyptian president now is capitalising on the Lebanese experience, in which the US and France adopted a Syrian formula for parliamentary elections to be held in stages from May 29. The elections are to be held under the so-called "Ghazi Kan'an law", which has been rejected by the majority of Christians but used by most of the Muslims.

Ghazi Kan'an is the name of Syria's minister of interior who for many years served as his country's "viceroy" in Lebanon - i.e, head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon who ruled this small country with an iron fist. He was behind the electoral law of 2000 which was engineered in such a way as to get the Muslims to elect most of the Christian MPs, while the Christians could not do the same.

For the past five years the Christians have tried, but failed, to change that law, while the Shiite Muslims - mainly the Syria-backed Hizbollah and Amal - rejected an electoral law of the 1960 which they said favoured feudalism.

The issue came to a head on Feb. 14, when former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in a massive bomb blast in central Beirut. From then on things turned up-side-down in Lebanon with the anti-Syria opposition accusing the Damascus regime and its Lebanese intelligence allies of having been behind the assassination.

Suddenly the 1.5 million-strong, flag-waving Lebanese opposition's demonstration on March 14 filled the TV screens worldwide and became the preferred picture for Bush in his crusade to democratise "the Greater Middle East". While Christian-Muslim bickering over the two laws and other formulae was threatening to delay the Lebanese elections indefinitely, the US and France backed the Muslim option - in favour of the law of 2000.

Christians opposed to the law of 2000 now accuse the Muslims of having replaced the "Syrian tutelage" with the tutelage of the US and France over Lebanon. But, with the US and French ambassadors in Beirut pushing, the Muslims went ahead with their campaign based on the law of 2000 - which Mubarak regards as undemocratic.

Thus, Saad Hariri, son of the slain Sunni Muslim leader, on May 15 proceeded with the forming of a major bloc. His group predicted that it would win a landslide in three Beirut districts on May 29. In an interview with AFP published on May 17, Hariri pledged a "white revolution against the police state which governed Lebanon during 15 years" - a reference to Syria and its allies. He said: "The opposition [consisting of his group and three other blocs] will win between 80 and 90 seats", in the 128-member parliament. This will be enough for the four blocs to topple the Maronite Christian President - ex-Gen. Emile Lahoud, a puppet of Syria - and get their own Maronite candidate to succeed him.

Hariri, 35, on May 15 announced a list of 19 candidates for Beirut's three multi-member constituencies, which will be the first to go to the polls in Lebanon's elections. Ten of them are Christians and the rest Muslims and they include a number of unlikely political alliances between former archfoes from Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. Hariri's list includes Solange Gemayel, widow of slain president and Maronite warlord Bashir Gemayel, the only candidate for Beirut's Maronite Christian seat, and Shiite movement Hizbollah's Amin Sherri for one of the two Shiite seats. "The opposition is not divided", Hariri said, of recent differences among the disparate groups over the maintenance of the constituency boundaries adopted for the last elections in 2000.

Christian leaders have called for the elections to be delayed so that changes can be made to boundaries seen as unfavourable to their community. The head of the powerful Maronite Church, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, says the current electoral law is wrong as it results in Christian MPs being elected by Muslims.

Hariri, strongly backed by the US and France, said delaying the elections "would have discredited the opposition and led to a political vacuum and a military government". He said that he was still trying to broaden the opposition alliance to include former prime minister Michel Aoun, who returned home from 15 years of exile earlier this month following the departure of the Syrian troops who drove him out.

"We are still negotiating with the Free Patriotic Movement of General Michel Aoun and we could cooperate with him, in parliament and in the government, after the elections", Hariri said, adding: "Our alliance with Solange Gemayel is, in part, an alliance with the Free Patriotic Movement [of Aoun]. We want transparency, much like Aoun's movement. We share his determination to fight against corruption and to set up an audit of the state of Lebanon's financial affairs". Syria is believed to have pumped about $35 bn out of Lebanon since 1976.

Lebanon has a collassal public debt which currently stands at about $40 bn despite repeated pledges to donors to implement reforms. On May 15, Aoun - who claims a key role in ending the 29-year Syrian troop presence - accused Hariri and other opposition politicians of "treason" for accepting the existing electoral law.