With a general election on June 7th, Lebanese passions are running high. Brazen posters festoon every public space, coding party fiefs by colour: blue for the party of the Future, orange for the party of Change and yellow for Hizbullah, the party of God, alongside a dozen other hues. Noisy rhetoric reverberates in street brawls and kitchen squabbles.rnLebanon is not just another small, combustible Mediterranean country of 4m people. It has a most unusual form of democracy, based on quotas for each of the 16 recognised sects in its 128-strong parliament. This mix of minorities, confused by divisions within sects and ever-shifting alliances inside and between them, has a tendency to explode, as it did during Lebanon's gruelling civil war in 1975-90. The country is also a cockpit for wider struggles. With outsiders such as Iran, America, Syria and Saudi Arabia throwing their weight behind competing factions, the electoral outcome will inevitably be seen as a test of their relative strengths.
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