The New March 8 Government Can be Great News For Lebanese Democracy

Ghassan Karam:

Let the cabinet govern, let it be homogeneous and let it be held accountable to the parliament and to the public. It is time that we stop playing the silly unconstitutional games of allocating ministries to groups and political offices. A cabinet must be one colour and must not award the veto power to any group or even offer the president a group of ministries.

I don’t know about you, but a part of me is very excited about this. Think of it this way: Whenever the next government does something unpopular (or popular for that matter), it owns it. It’s responsible for it. That’s a first.

BUT ( ← see? that’s a big ‘but’) never underestimate the Lebanese ability to blame predecessors. Remember “Al-turka al thakila” (the heavy, inherited burden) that PM Salim El Hoss brought up incessantly to blame the previous Hariri’s government for all the country’s ills?