Qifa Nabki ... Unmasked!

Elias Muhanna drops his pseudonym to write this commentary on the Lebanese elections for the National:

Despite the hype ... signs increasingly suggest that the actual outcome of the elections will be far less significant than the manoeuvring of the post-election period – when the cabinet will be assembled, a prime minister chosen and the veto powers of the opposition decided. The months after the election seem likely to bring the break-up of existing alliances, the creation of new ones and a redrawing of the Lebanese political map. This is a product both of changing regional dynamics as well as growing fractiousness among Lebanon’s political elite, who have begun to sacrifice coalition unity in favour of safeguarding their own parties’ parliamentary representation.