BEIRUT — Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, swept parliamentary elections in Lebanon's capital Sunday, inheriting the public mantle left by his father and shoring up his chances of becoming prime minister.
A soft-spoken, billionaire businessman who insists that he wasn't groomed for politics, the 35-year-old Hariri headed a bloc of candidates that won all 19 of the city's seats in the first election since Syrian troops ended their 29-year domination of Lebanon.
Hariri, who presides over his father's business empire, is poised to take over the public role left vacant by the assassination three months ago. Voter turnout was light Sunday, but the win was hailed as a triumph of public confidence for the Hariri family. Hariri's campaign rhetoric was heavy with invocations of "the martyr," and pictures of the slain patriarch were plastered on shop windows, cars and even bottles of water.
"Today national unity was won in the face of the old regime. Lebanon is united in you," a beaming Hariri told hundreds of raucous well-wishers who thronged the streets outside the family's mansion, beating drums, tossing fistfuls of petals and screaming his name. "This is a win for Rafik Hariri."
The Saudi-reared, Georgetown-educated Saad Hariri ascended to the head of Lebanon's Sunni Muslim community after his father's death. Despite his relative youth and inexperience, the debate waged across Beirut these days is not whether he will become prime minister, but how soon he'll get the job. Some people think Hariri should gain political experience before becoming premier.
Voting for the 128-member parliament will continue every Sunday until June 19. Legislators will then meet to choose a prime minister. Lebanon's Constitution, which apportions power among the religious sects, stipulates that the position must be held by a Sunni Muslim.
"There is no alternative in Lebanon," said Adnan Iskander, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said of Hariri's chances of becoming the next premier. "There are now no serious contenders in the Sunni camp."
After his father's assassination, Hariri rushed home from Saudi Arabia, where he oversaw his family's multibillion-dollar empire. In the tumultuous weeks that followed, he threw himself into politics out of a conviction that his father's work must continue, he said.
