In the June 7 elections, Tashnaq, the largest and historically most prominent Armenian party in Lebanon, scored only two of the six seats reserved for Armenians in parliament (two other seats, the minority and Evangelical seats in Beirut, generally go to Armenian candidates). Now, Armenians supporting Tashnaq have been accused of disloyalty by some close to Metn powerhouse Michel al-Murr.  Moreover, there are rumblings that Armenians in Lebanon are becoming isolated from the country’s larger Christian community, which traditionally they had considered themselves an integral part of.
 
Before the election there had been talk of a deal in Metn between Tashnaq, which is aligned with the opposition, and Murr, who sided with the majority this time around, for an exchange of votes. Essentially, Armenians voting for the Tashnaq-supported March 8 list would cross off the name of one of the opposition’s candidates for the district’s two Greek Orthodox seats and write Murr’s name instead. For the remaining seat, Murr asked Tashnaq to get its supporters to distribute their votes equally between the two Free Patriotic Movement candidates, MP Ghassan Moukheiber and Ghassan Rahbani, to increase Murr’s chances of getting elected; a deal Tashnaq insisted they had kept to.
 
While Murr ending up winning the seat, the supposed Armenian crossover votes failed to materialize, making his vote totals lower than he had expected and meaning many on his list failed to make it to parliament. It is now rumored that Murr will make the community pay a price for their apparent disloyalty. What is evident is that Murr, despite his victory, is unhappy with the election results, particularly concerning Armenian votes, as was made clear on Tuesday. On that day, Murr held a press conference during which he brandished fake IDs that he said had been used for voter fraud and announced that he would contest the results of the Metn race, citing irregularities with the Armenian vote.
 
Murr claimed that the total number of Armenian votes in the 2007 Metn by-election was 9,200 out of a total of 32,341 registered Armenian voters. This year he said the number of registered voters jumped to 32,849.
 
“MP Hagop Pakradounian announced on Monday that 13,700 Armenian voters cast their ballots on June 7,” Murr continued at the press conference. “The number of ballots increased by 4,371 from 2007 to 2009,” he said, while the number of registered voters increased by only 500. “The increase in percentage from 2007 to 2009 raises suspicion about the transparency of the elections in the Metn.”
 
Tashnaq responded the next day, when its central committee issued a statement disputing Murr’s figures as well as the charge that they had been disloyal or had rigged the vote, claiming instead that “the percentage of ballots in the Metn district in the 2009 elections increased by 17% compared to 2007, something which would logically explain the increase of the Armenian participation in the elections.”
 
“Three days before the elections, Murr asked the Tashnaq to distribute their votes equally between the two Orthodox candidates of the Free Patriotic Movement,” the statement said, “the party abided by Murr’s request.”
 
Nareg Abrahamian, who until the very last minute was the March 14 candidate for the Armenian seat in Zahle, said that “it was not the Armenians who cheated Michel al-Murr in Metn; it was Hagop Pakradounian and his group of people. I don’t consider them Tashnaq because the party, in its foundation and principles, is now history. The people who run it now are not in sync with the parties’ values and principles. Their behavior shows that they have cheated Michel al-Murr and the rest of the people. We blame those who believed them.”
 
Still, Abrahamian added that while he wasn’t sure if the Armenian votes in Metn were fraudulent, he didn’t think it was likely because Tashnaq was able to get huge numbers of people from outside. “If there was [fraud] it would probably have been very limited,” Abrahamian said.
 
Pakradounian for his part was not available for comment, despite numerous requests for an interview, and other Tashnaq officials said that Pakradounian was the only one qualified to speak for the party. 
 
The perception that Armenians were against the majority has already sparked grumbling among some March 14 supporters. Indeed, some of the comments have been sufficiently anti-Armenian in tone to prompt Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and  Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt to step in. On Thursday, at an event for his new book, Three Years for the Third Republic Siniora said, “We are hearing increasingly that so-and-so made it parliament because of the Sunni vote, or the Shia vote or the Armenian vote. What is this language we are using? Are the Sunnis, Shia and Armenians not Lebanese?”
 
One week earlier, Jumblatt denounced what he called attempts to portray the Armenians and the Tashnaq party as outsiders. “Having the Tashnaq party disagreeing with a political alliance does not render it alien,” Jumblatt said, stressing that “Armenians contributed to building the Lebanese state and were one of the pillars in establishing the national pact…. They constitute a part of the Lebanese community.”
 
Abrahamian said that “Armenians should not pay the price. It is the ones who cheated who should pay the price. The Armenian society has been under pressure for the past six months. They were threatened and pressured. We disagree with our allies on this because we are against the way that Armenians are pushed to vote by the Tashnaq.”
 
Many in the community see the need for political unity. Mikael Vayejian, the director of Radio Sevan, an Armenian station in Beirut, said that before the election there had been discussions between Tashnaq and the two other Armenian parties, Ramgavar and Henshag, both of which are aligned with March 14, to unify. However, talks between the two sides soon broke down, with the two March 14 parties asking for equal power, and Tashnaq insisting on a dominant role, said Vayejian, who is on Ramgavar’s executive committee.
 
Asked if the three parties might still reconcile now that the election is behind them, Vayejian said, “No, currently there is no chance.”
 
Maysam Ali contributed in reporting for this article