Held on July 7 this year, the Lebanese parliamentary elections gave a boost to the ruling pro-Western ’coalition of March 14’. While 71 of the 128 seats in parliament went to the ’cedar revolution’, the opposition ’coalition of March 8’ only won 57. Moreover, the result is a personal triumph for the incoming prime minister Saad Hariri, a Sunnite, because it gave him a chance to step out of the shadow of his father Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister who was murdered.