Lebanon by-election highlights Christian disunity

By Nadim Ladki

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Christians emerged on Monday from a by-election split down the middle after opposition leader Michel Aoun's candidate narrowly beat former President Amin Gemayel, a pillar of the Western-backed government.

Both sides took comfort from Sunday's contest in the Metn area north of Beirut, but the outcome offered no clear pointers to the forthcoming presidential election or a way out of a 9-month-old deadlock paralysing Lebanon's ruling institutions.

"It does not close the house of Gemayel or deliver Aoun to the presidency," political analyst Samir Constantine said.

Aoun is the only declared candidate for president, always a Maronite Christian under the sectarian power-sharing system.

Choosing a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud is the next political battle for the anti-Syrian forces behind Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the opposition that groups Aoun with Hezbollah and Amal, Shi'ite factions backed by Damascus.

The ruling coalition's majority in parliament fell to 69 in the 128-seat assembly after the Metn election. A pro-government candidate easily won another by-election on Sunday.

"The Metn elections ended politically without a victor and a vanquished. There was a loser, but there was no winner," said former Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss, a Sunni elder statesman.

"If the contest was a contest of sizes, then both competitors were effectively down-sized."