Beyond the political statements and strictly electoral interests, the current negotiations over a new electoral law in Lebanon are a fundamental change in Lebanon’s internal balance of power. The willingness of Christian parties to reclaim their parliamentary seats under the leadership of the Maronite Patriarchate goes beyond the desire of one political camp to score a victory against the other. For the first time since the Taif Accord, it allows the Christians to regain some tangible rights, which they had lost.

In fact, if we go back in time a little, we remember how the Taif Accord took away much of the Christians’ rights, then called “privileges,” by stripping away presidential powers and giving them, in principle, to the council of ministers. According to the Taif Accord, the council of ministers was supposed to include all Lebanese sectarian components and be split evenly between Muslims and Christians.

Moreover, Taif officially established strict Christian-Muslim parity in the number of parliamentary deputies and in the government jobs of first category. But this parity was only numerical. In other words, there was an equal number of Christians and Muslims in public institutions, parliament and government, but the Christians in those jobs did not represent the Christian base. There were chosen by the Muslim political forces allied with the Syrian guardian. Political groups representing the Christian base at the time were completely marginalized after they engaged in a fratricidal, murderous, bloody and destructive war, which resulted in a total Syrian occupation of the country. Gen. Michel Aoun was forced into exile. The Lebanese Forces leader was put in prison. And former President Amine Gemayel lived abroad.

Officially, Taif produced no winners and losers. But in fact, the winners were the Muslims, especially Sunnis, whose victory was embodied by the leadership of Rafik Hariri. The losers were the Christians. The best evidence of that is that the 1992 elections were boycotted by the great majority of Christians, with the approval of the Maronite Patriarch, without the boycott preventing the formation of a new parliament, which had Christian deputies elected by less than 50 votes.