Lebanon’s Presidential Crisis
In-The-MakingBy Dr Marwan Asmar
07 December, 2007
Countercurrents.orgConspiratorial theories have become no more than clichés in the Arab world. The idea it is the United States and Israel behind everything evil in the region has become everyone’s skeleton-in-the-cupboard’s easy prey.
Take Lebanon for instance, a country seen as the playground for regional and international politics where countries like Syria, Israel, America, Iran and a few others are playing for keeps through domestic protégés and political parties that supposedly have left their nationalism to the throes of foreign powers.
Its has become too easy to blame others that one is left bewildered to ask what about domestic Lebanese politics and what role is it playing if any in the country’s framework. Certainly the present ‘no president’ crisis is domestic dictated by local politics, rather than a regional and/or international one.
While the world ramification angle is true, it can’t and shouldn’t be the whole story for domestic politics has its own dynamics and will, however much outside powers try to meddle in its own local affairs.
Lebanon is without a president and has been so since 24 November with Prime Minister Fouad Sinora acting temporarily as a caretaker president till things are sorted out and political parties and politicians in the Lebanese Parliament get some sense knocked into their heads and elect a president that everyone can agree on.
But the situation is no-can-do for the time being despite the fact almost all of the parties, liberals, Christian Maronites, Shiites, Sunis, the Hizbollah deputies, say they have agreed on a president who is the current leader of the Lebanese army, General Michel Sulieman whose Christian-nationalist-pro-Syrian credentials have proved to be of a military-political strongman that may appeal to Lebanon’s fractious political sects. He is being seen as the true consensus man.
But if he is to become president these erstwhile parliamentarians have to get together and change yet again the Constitution to allow the person they agreed on to stand as president because according to present rules candidates need to have been out of office for two full years just like they did when they elected former President Emile Lahoud who was also an army man and a pro-Syrian.
Changing the Constitution does not appear too much of a problem for Lebanese politicians who seem to be free wheelers and dealers that are being described by some as pragmatists and by others as political opportunists searching for what is good for themselves regardless of the costs.
The search for president started a year ago with deputies locked into an almost Herculian battle to elect what is being described as a mint, transparent, clean president with different code words according to whose side one is looking at. For Christians and Sunnis they are looking for a future president not tainted by pro-Syrian tendencies.
But apparently if he is pro-American that’s alright because it means he and they support democracy and transparency. The fact that the US supports Israel to the hilt, a country that made war on Lebanon in 2006, occupied its south between 1982 till 1999 and frequently bombed Beirut is neither here nor there.
All this is water over a ducks back. From Saad Al Hariri’s Mustaqbal Party to Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, to the Patriarch Church and the Hizbollah deputies, they are all now looking for a way out, and that’s where General Michel Sulieman is appearing to fit in.
Because of his background all the factions including Hizbollah, and Al Hariri’s Sunni Mustaqbal Party are prepared to accept Sulieman as a way out, since he is a bit of everything, while the sticking point today is from Aoun who wants additional guarantees that this incoming president will stay only for two years.
The political conundrum of changing the Constitution and the two-year guarantee stands like a sore thumb despite the fact that Aoun and Sulieman are both Christians. Its is suggested Aoun is playing for political tactics and hardcore political guarantees which is hard enough in Lebanese politics, to stand as president himself when the time is right, in 2008, and be accepted by the deputies under the country’s consociational system that reserves the presidency to a Christian, the prime minister to a Sunni and the parliamentary speakership to a Shiite.
With political wrangling in parliament, the country has been in jitters for the past few weeks with everyone on the street in a heightened feeling of fear about yet another civil war recurring similar to the first 1975-1990 one as they wait for their cushy-chained-in-their-chairs politicians to make a move and elect the person for the highest seat in the land.
People feel it is these politicians representing different factions have now the power to make or break the country if they wanted to in their quest for political power. There business-political-liberal-religious-sectarian mentalities are intertwined together producing a mesh-mash of ideologies.
Today power is in their hands and not in the hands of outsiders, it is their political will that dictate whether a new presidency is installed as a symbol of unity or will they be willing to see a tottering political system and satisfying those who believe Lebanon is another failed state, its democracy is only skin-deep that does not function and need others like the Syrians, Israelis, Iranians, United States, the French and the Saudi Arabians to do its bidding.
The Lebanese people, politicians, and leaders are strange lot. From the outside, they are the most happy-go-lucky-people, yet they have deeply held convictions divided along sectarian and religious lines that increase polarization and produces archaic-modern-quirk systems of thought lumped together which make the oiling of their political machine hard to turn in the best of circumstances.
One of the few persons who knew how to hold such a system together was the late Prime Minister Rafiq Al Hariri who was murdered on the streets of Beirut late one night in 2005. While there are tremendous finger pointing since his death, nobody really knows who killed him and many of his entourage.
Since then the country has filtered into a bad-dream of chaos with the killing of politicians and journalists deemed to be anti-Syrian. This bad-dream slowly turned into recriminations in parliament, which is the current and divisive stage of Lebanese politics.
Will the politicians stand as statesmen above political nitpicking, will they at last choose Michel Sulieman and will he able to produce a modicum of stability, and save the country from a slippery-slope of degeneration and keep the regional and international wolves at bay waiting for the kill, tough questions for Lebanon, tough question for politics.
The author is the Responsible Chief Editor of Jo Magazine, a monthly in Amman that specializes in Jordanian current affairs.
Leave A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Digg it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So, as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Syndicate CC Headlines On Your Blog
