Beirut, the Lebanon
Two months after the general election and only six weeks after appointing of Saad Hariri, leader of the parliamentary majority, to form the government, the Lebanon still does has not have a new government. The same. anti-Syrian coalition that should appoint the new Ministers appears to be disintegrating due to the recent defection of the Druse leader Walid Jumblat, until recently Syria’s bitter enemy. For the moment, Damascus says thank you.
Even though the constitution poses no time limits for the appointed Premier, nor on the period of time needed for consultations, the informal deadline established for announcing the new government is approaching. Before August 22nd, the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan, Hariri should travel to the Baabda presidential palace and provide President Michel Suleiman with a list of ministers. Consultations could, however, last even longer. In the Lebanon, where respecting religious precepts is an important element in political legitimisation. An unwritten custom indicates that during the 28 days of fasting (that this year coincide with the hot summer months of August and September) no crucial decision for the country is taken in institutional palaces.
Sunni leader Hariri, the political heir to former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, murdered in 2005, was appointed on June 27th after the victory of the coalition led by his party over the opposition, led by the rival Shia movement Hezbollah (71 seats compared to 57 out of a total of 128). Throughout the month of July, no one in Beirut mentioned the word "delay" regard to forming a government, emphasising instead Hariri’s need to respect the necessary "physiological period" for consultations, not only with his partners and local political opponents, but, as tradition dictates, also with various regional players such as Damascus, Riyadh, Teheran, Washington and Paris, which together with Beirut, are the capitals in which consultations for forming the next Lebanese government are held.
After the inter-Lebanese agreements signed in Doha in May 2008, which effectively made official the military supremacy of Hezbollah’s armed factions in the Lebanon, the Lebanon’s political-denominational elements adhered to a principle already often proposed in the recent past. The government must be one of “national unity." This means it must consist in representatives of not only all the main denominational communities, but also have a minority quota (one third) of members representing the opposition. In this case Hezbollah and its allies.
It is known that the Lebanese players each have a regional ‘godfather. Hezbollah has Iran and Hariri has Saudi Arabia. Amal, the other Shia party depending from the Party of God and supported by Syria, in turn protects numerous minor Lebanese leaders who joined the coalition led by Hezbollah. On the other hand, the United States support the coalition led by Hariri, which includes also two traditionally anti-Syrian Christian political parties (Lebanese Forces and The Free Phalangist Party).
Until very recently Hariri’s majority included the Party led by the Druse leader Walid Jumblat. Traditionally ‘allied with whoever is most powerful at any given time’ and for this reason known as "the chameleon", last August 2nd and after weeks of gradual repositioning, Jumblat announced he was abandoning the majority. He made this announcement during a press conference that will be remembered in the chronologies of the history of contemporary Lebanon. Summoned at the Beau Rivage Horel, not far from where, until 2005, there was one of the Syrian military secret service’s prisons, the press conference saw Jumblat declare the end of his alliance with the anti-Syrian front. All this in the name of principles of a world that no longer seems to exist.
Appeals for "pan-Arabism", for "Arab socialism", for a "third way" and above all for the "Palestinian cause as the mother of all Arab causes", echoed through the room at the Beau Rivage with all the musty feelings of museum exhibits. Egyptian leader Nasser is dead, as is the Palestinian Yasser Arafat; the USSR has fallen and the Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad, the leader of the "rejection front", was buried nine years ago. This was how Jumblat one of the Lebanon’s cleverest politicians and one who in recent years had addressed ferocious accusations at Damascus and its ‘hegemonic’ policies in the Lebanon, blew smoke in everyone’s eyes so as to disguise his umpteenth reversal.
The instant effect of Jumblat’s words was that Hariri left the country. As if offended by the speech, a few hours after the press conference at the Beau Rivage, the young newly-appointed premier abandoned Beirut and his task to form a new government. The official excuse was a "private holiday". Hariri only returned to Beirut last August 10th having spent a few days in the South of France ‘”meditating – according to Fuad Siniora, the previous premier and a man loyal to Hariri – far from the political rhetoric so fashionable in the Lebanon". With Hariri away, consultations for forming a new government were suspended. Negotiations were formally resumed when he returned, but there has been no significant progress.
The position taken by Jumblat’s however also shook the regional capitals. After the ‘chameleon’s’ statement, Saudi Arabia instantly sent its current Minister for Tourism and former Ambassador to the Lebanon, Abdallah Khoja, at the time on a mission in far away Morocco, to Beirut, to meet with the Druse leader. Urged by Riyadh, Jumblat met with President Suleiman, promising that his repositioning did not mean he had abandoned the parliamentary majority and that, however, the new position he had taken would not obstruct the forming of the new government. For the moment there has been no official reaction from Damascus. It is however obvious that, whoever the members of the next government will be, Syria has everything to gain from the disintegration of the anti-Syrian front. Even any further delay in forming a government is an advantage for Damascus, for whom a politically divided and institutionally weak Lebanon is the best thing one could hope for.
After years of ostracism from Jacques Chirac’s France and from the United States led by George W. Bush, for months now Syria has returned to the centre stage in Middle Eastern diplomacy, encouraged by the aperture shown by Barack Obama and earlier on by Nicolas Sarkozy. Even this country’s regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia has been persuaded to re-establish a dialogue with Damascus in the name of "inter-Arab reconciliation". Respecting tradition, Syria knows how to wait. There will always be time to form a government in the Lebanon. Even after Ramadan.
Translated by Francesca Simmons