Lebanon Still Waits for a Cabinet

The climate of cooperation that followed the June parliamentary elections has evaporated and efforts to form a new government have come to a standstill.

After the results of the elections were announced, the March 8 coalition graciously accepted its “defeat”, while Saad Hariri’s March 14 alliance promised to work closely with the new opposition. Now, nearly three months after the elections, politicians are stilled deadlocked over the formation of the new cabinet.

When he was appointed Prime Minister, Hariri was tasked with  forming the cabinet of ministers that would run Lebanon’s government. His March 14 alliance included Sunni, Christian, and Druze MPs. It looked as though the group would have a strong majority and mandate to run the next government, but that has not been the case.

The alliance’s ability to form a government was dealt a serious blow when Walid Jumblatt’s Druze Progressive Socialist Party faction announced it was leaving the coalition and taking its 11 MPs with it.  Jumblatt has stated that his bloc will not be joining the pro-Syrian March 8 bloc, but will maintain a centrist stance with President Sleiman.

Jumblatt has a long history of changing sides depending on what he thought was best for the Druze. This was true throughout Lebanon’s civil war and beyond.

After the start of the United States’ war in Iraq, Jumblatt came out as an outspoken critic of Syria when the Bush administration took a decidedly anti-Syrian stance. When Rafik Harir was assassinated in 2005, Jumblatt was vocal about his suspicion of Syrian involvement. Later that year, Syrian forces were expelled from Lebanon which was a great blow to the Assad regime’s influence there. However, with  President Obama taking a more conciliatory stance towards Damascus, Jumblatt once again changed his tune.

Syria’s relationship with both Saudi Arabia and the United States was thawing, and its influence in Lebanon was once again on the rise. Seeing the writing on the wall that it no longer paid to be a critic of Damascus, Jumblatt ceased his criticisms and left the team that came to power based on an anti-Syrian ideology.

And just like that, Hariri’s very difficult task became that much harder.

This week Hariri is holding a conference with all the MPs that remain aligned with him, which is still a significant number, in order to demonstrate a unified front and to discuss what comes next.

Some analysts have speculated that the current detente between Syria and Saudi Arabia, two nations with great enormous influence in Lebanon, would lead to a more effective government in Beirut.

Saad Hariri is close with Riyadh. The 39 year-old telecommunications and construction billionaire was born in Saudi Arabia and maintains duel citizenship. His father Rafik was also close with the Kingdom and was the driving force behind Lebanon’s reconstruction after the civil war.

When Hariri was assassinated in 2005, many believed that Syria was responsible and relations between Riyadh and Damascus quickly soured. As is often the case, the two countries let their battle play out in Lebanon via proxy. As a result,  efforts to govern were thwarted by disagreements between pro-Saudi/ pro-Hariri Sunnis and pro-Syrian Shiites. In 2006, the two main Shiite parties refused to participate in parliament grinding the government to a halt.

Eventually tensions came to a head in May 2008 when Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora attempted to disable Hizballah’s communication system and the group responded by seizing West Beirut. The two sides came to an agreement after it was promised that the government would not try to disarm Hizballah by force again and would grant veto power in the cabinet to the minority. In exchange, Hizballah promised not to take up arms again with the goal of strengthening itself politically.

Hizballah would like veto power in the cabinet in order to prevent the government from ever trying to disarm it again. While the group demonstrated its tremendous strength in Lebanon, the act greatly dismayed many Lebanese and provided a terrifying reminder of just how far Lebanon had come since the civil war. The events of May 2008 may have benefited Hizballah in the short term, but the scare cost them politically and they would greatly wish to prevent a recurrence.

The Shia are the most populous group in Lebanon and Hizballah is their most influential representative. The resistance group is well know for its alliance with Iran, but Hizballah would not be where it is today without  the continued assistance of Syria.  Hizballah has the reputation for being one of the most capable and well armed guerrilla forces in the world.  While the weapons and training come from Iran, none of it arrives in Lebanon without first passing through Syria, which nearly completely surrounds the tiny country.

Hizballah needs  Syria in order to stay strong, but Syria also needs Hizballah (as well as Amal) to maintain its influence in Lebanon, which Damascus has historically regarded like one of its provinces. So any attempt to disrupt that relationship is immediately met with resistance, as was the case when the pro-Saudi Sunni Prime Minister tried to dismantle Hizballah’s communication network. With Syria and Saudi Arabia wielding such tremendous influence in Lebanon, it’s no wonder that the government grinds to a halt when the two nations are at odds with each other.

Another nation that wields tremendous influence in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East, both positive and negative, is the United States. After Barack Obama was elected president, he changed course from the Bush administration’s policy of Syrian isolation (which only drew Syria closer to Iran) in favor of open diplomacy. Tensions between the two countries began to ease.  Then tensions between Syria and Saudi Arabia began to ease.

With three of the five countries with the most influence on Lebanon now seemingly cooperating (the other two being Iran and Israel), it seemed as  though the formation of a government in Lebanon was close at hand. But again, this has not been the case.

Today, the biggest hindrance still seems to be the makeup of the cabinet. The minority, led by Hizballah, wants  enough seats for a veto. This would allow it to block any government action that it was particularly opposed to, like any attempt by the government to disarm Hizballah, or any actions related to the Hariri Tribunal, which has been investigating  Rafik Hariri’s death.

But all is not lost and efforts are still underway to form a working government. House Speaker and Amal Movement leader Nabih Berri is set to give an address indicating his intent to redouble the effort behind the formation of a government, and Saad Hariri is rumored to be meeting with the opposition’s influential Christian General Michel Aoun.

After all is said and done, it seems that the veto power issue is the sticking point, and maybe all of  the rest is just part of the negotiation process. Hizballah and Amal want veto power, General Aoun wants some say in the cabinet’s composition, and Hariri wants to form a new government without giving Hizballah carte blanche in the future.

While it will require intense negotiation and possibly some old fashioned horse-trading to sort out, these issues are hardly insurmountable. And with Lebanon’s long history of sectarian violence, the political climate in Beirut these days seems relatively calm.