On an Easter break in south Lebanon with visitors from Britain, we see scores of election posters lining the highway ahead of the June 7 parliamentary poll -- the first big test of stability here since a Qatari-brokered deal last year calmed an internal crisis that had dragged Lebanon towards renewed civil war. Vague slogans on the slickly produced adverts promise change, democracy, resistance (to Israel) and much else beside. But the election will change little. Power might shift a bit
between Lebanon's dominant alliances -- one backed by the West and Saudi Arabia, the other by Syria and Iran. But voters have scant choice as the sectarian power-sharing system allows party leaders to do deals that stitch up most seats in advance.

Election tension might spark low-level clashes, but external factors -- a Syrian-Saudi rapprochement, Obama's overtures to Damascus and Tehran -- have helped cool the atmosphere. And the Lebanese, who have so far survived the global downturn thanks to the liquidity and conservative policies of their banks, know any major violence could wreck the lucrative summer tourist season.

On the Beirut-Tyre highway, billboards for beach resorts alternate with Hezbollah banners. The Iranian-backed Shi'ite group does not seem keen to provoke a repeat of its 2006 war
with Israel, but no one doubts its military capacity, however well concealed. South of the Litani river, we see only UNIFIL peacekeepers and Lebanese army checkpoints. The calm we enjoyed on our break would of course unravel swiftly if Israel's confrontation with Iran were to ignite in outright conflict.

Not that all is quiet in Lebanon -- four soldiers were ambushed and killed in the Bekaa Valley this week by brothers of a drug baron slain earlier at an army checkpoint, illustrating the fragility of the rule of law, especially in neglected rural hinterlands. We decide to skip the Roman ruins of Baalbek.

Back in Beirut, cranes swing over building sites where Syrian workers toil away as if Lebanon were immune from the world's economic woes. In fact property prices have lost some froth, but the crisis has been strangely slow to bite. Money sent home by Lebanese working in the Gulf and elsewhere makes up more than a quarter of GDP, but the finance minister says his compatriots are not the first to be fired.

Perhaps the impact will be felt later, but for now Lebanese can still afford to employ many foreigners themselves. Not just Syrian labourers. Our visitors were also struck by the Ethiopian maids twittering from balconies, not to mention the Bangladeshis in green overalls dusting the traffic lights downtown.

(Tourists walk in the forest of cedars, located north of Mount Lebanon July 24, 2008. Sturdy cedars perched high in the mountains stand for many Lebanese as symbols of their fractured lands survival. But some environmentalists worry that the trees face a new threat from global warming. Picture taken July 24, 2008. To match feature LEBANON-CEDARS/ REUTERS/ Jamal Saidi (LEBANON))

Lebanon’s beaches, ski slopes and nightclubs exude glitzy modernity. Its educated elite appears cosmopolitan and sophisticated. But beneath the gloss lie deeply traditional aspects of a society reluctant to shake off a sectarian power-sharing system in which loyalty to one of Lebanon’s 17 religious communities takes precedence over citizenship.

    Nothing illustrates this better than star-crossed lovers.

    Take Laure and Ali, who began dating six years ago after a chance encounter at university in Beirut when they were both 21. She studied political science and now works for an international aid organization. He is a computer and communications engineer.

    Long ago they decided to wed, but there was a snag. Laure is Christian, Ali a Shi’ite Muslim, though they say these identities are just “on paper”. Their families opposed the match across the religious divide, just as they were against the romance from the start.

    “My parents had different arguments, none of them convincing,” recalls Laure. “They said the two families would never get along. They worried what people would say. They said: ‘He’s going to force you to wear a veil, maybe now he’s tolerant, but later he will get more and more into religion’. And then it was the kids, what would the kids be?”

    The objections of Ali’s parents also revolved on social fears, not religious convictions. “If they were very religious, I would understand their point of view. But they are not, so I couldn’t understand their opposition,” he says.

    Laure and Ali could have eloped, as many Lebanese couples in their plight do. Instead they chose a long, uncertain but ultimately successful quest to win over their families.

    “There was such a struggle in my mind,” says Laure, smiling at her fiancé. “I didn’t want to have to choose between someone I love and my parents, whom I love too. After six years of struggle, I’m one of the lucky ones who convinced the parents to agree to the marriage. They like Ali now and they are even asking when we are getting married.”

    Ali admits that the long years of rejection by Laure’s parents, who refused to meet him, had hurt. He thought: “How can they judge me if they don’t know me?”

    The couple’s problems don’t end there. Unless one of them converts, they cannot wed in Lebanon. Civil marriage is not recognized here – unless it is performed abroad. Personal status laws are governed by each religious community, which jealously guard this prerogative as a source of power. So inequalities and anomalies abound.

    “For example, Lebanese law says no one can inherit from someone of a different religion,” Laure explains. “So if Ali dies, I wouldn’t inherit. And if my children are registered as Muslims, they wouldn’t inherit from me.”

    Former Lebanese President Elias Hrawi tried to introduce the option of civil marriage in 1998 over the hostility of Christian and Muslim religious leaders. The bill won cabinet approval but not that of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, who held Saudi and Lebanese passports. Saudi clerics ruled that the proposal contravened Islamic Sharia law.

    So next summer Laure and Ali will fly to nearby Cyprus for a civil marriage, probably without friends or family due to the costs. The procedure is so common that travel agents offer wedding packages ($1,680 for a one-day trip to Nicosia to sign the papers plus day use of a Larnaca hotel afterwards and a free bottle of local champagne thrown in).

    “Personally it kind of insults me that I cannot marry the way I want to in my country,” says Ali. “But then again, so many things in this country work in a way they are not supposed to. If we didn’t accept that, we’d all be in depression.”      

Lebanon, once a byword for violent anarchy, remains a country where the rule of law is patchy, to put it kindly. But Interior Minister Ziad Baroud, a youthful reform-minded lawyer who was appointed in July as part of a national unity government, is determined to change that, or at least to make a start. He has told the traffic police to do something about the cheerful but sometimes lethal chaos that pervades the roads. 

    Few Lebanese normally bother with seat belts or crash helmets. Speeding with a mobile phone glued to your ear or an infant in your lap comes naturally. Double or triple parking is the norm, lane discipline an alien concept and right of way determined by who gets there first or who drives a bigger vehicle. Scooters fizz everywhere, a law unto themselves. 

    Now Baroud is trying to impose order on all this wild individualism. As I discovered the hard way.

    Leaving home by car the other day, I found my normal route blocked by a truck delivering steel rods to a building site. I had a choice. Turn left, legally, and face a lengthy detour through jammed streets, or turn right for 20 metres the wrong way down a one-way street onto the main road.

    I was in a hurry and in Beirut one-way signs are just part of the urban decor, so for the first time in my two years here (honest), I took the short cut. Only to find myself collared by the long arm of the Lebanese constabulary lurking around the corner. The young traffic cop then swiftly flagged down a sleek black Mercedes which had followed my rash example. He proved impervious to our excuses about the truck obstruction.

    "I have to give you a ticket," he told the protesting Lebanese driver, "otherwise this foreigner will get a bad impression."

    "And I have to give you a ticket," he gently explained to me, switching into competent English, "because I'm booking the Mercedes."

    I pleaded for a while, telling him how absurd it was that I'd been caught on my first offence. "Yes, it's bad luck," he sympathised, continuing to write out the ticket.

    Just then sirens wailed and a convoy of black SUVs carved a path through traffic, lights flashing. For a few moments, my policeman gestured furiously at drivers to make way. "That was our minister, Mr Baroud," he said as the cavalcade tore on noisily towards the airport road.

    "Ah, he's the reason you are giving me a ticket," I suggested.

    "Exactly, I don't want to lose my job, I'm so sorry," he apologised with a smile, handing me a receipt for my driving licence, to be redeemed later that day after a long wait and payment of a $40 fine.

    Well, I had to admit it was a fair cop. And I can only applaud Baroud's quixotic effort at enforcing the rules of the road  -- the message on seat belts is already getting through. If he succeeds,  who knows, he might be able to crack down on the bribery, tax evasion and abuse of power which explain Lebanon's lowly ranking of 102 on Transparency International's most recent Corruption Perceptions Index -- comparable to the likes of Tanzania, Bolivia and Mongolia. 

       But Baroud is a member of a government with a very short shelf-life. His main task is to prepare for parliamentary elections in May or June next year. And when it comes to tackling the unruly habits of the Lebanese, on or off the road, there are no short cuts.