❊ Why Lebanon Still Has No Government

PM Designate Najib Mikati:

The key to resolve the political crises is by adhering to the implementation of texts and spirit of the Constitution which preserve the positions and role of all the Lebanese groups … No one can eliminate the other or underestimate its effective presence in the country and institutions

I’ve been trying for a while to understand why Mr. Mikati is taking so much time to form a government. In theory, things should be simple: Since the minority announced that it doesn’t want to join, the formation should be a relatively straightforward matter of allotting ministers in proportion to their parliamentary representation, or so Mr. Aoun is arguing.

Alas, in Lebanon things are never so simple, and there are many reasons why Lebanon still doesn’t have a government.

To begin with, Mr. Aoun’s numbers logic would have had a more solid footing if Lebanon did not have an artificial 50/50 quota system of divvying power up between Muslims and Christians. That distortion rendered all talks of exact mathematics in government formation a purely theoretical exercise.

Then you have the very important “No one can eliminate the other” principle which Mr. Mikati referred to in the quote above. This is another Lebanese political distortion which effectively means that Lebanon will never have non-consensual majoritarian rule. Our options have always been a) Everybody rules (government of national unity) or b) Nobody rules (government of technocrats). March 14 found this out the hard way in 2006 and 2007 when Hezbollah (part of the minority then) forced its way into keeping Mr. Berri as speaker and securing a veto in the government. March 8 is now in the process of learning the same lesson.

Internal distrust at March 8 is also playing a role. Mr. Aoun is insisting on having what effectively amounts to a blocking third in the government. But while Hezbollah does want an empowered Aoun, it secretly doesn’t trust the unpredictable general enough to hand him such a veto. Even more worried about Mr. Aoun’s demands are smaller parties in March 8 that are vested deeply into the “no one can eliminate the other” principle. Leaders like Walid Jumblat and Nabih Berri are used to over-representation and would be loath to give that up to satisfy an ambitious ally, an ally they never really liked in the first place.

The role of Baabada and the Lebanese President. Mr. Sleiman himself is a product of the “No one can eliminate the other” principle. He sees himself as the guardian of “balance” in the country and he’s not comfortable with the idea of a Hezbollah-led government. But he is also at loggerheads with Mr. Aoun over the role of his protégé Ziad Baroud, the popular Minster of Interior. Mr. Aoun insists on replacing Minister Baroud with one of his own men, but he is opposed by the President and -less publicly- by his March 8 allies who don’t have a stomach for the kind of disruption Mr. Aoun has in mind for the Ministry of Interior.

Finally, you have Sunni and Tripoli politics. Mr. Mikati understands that in order to placate the Sunni street and establishment (still angry at how Mr. Hariri was ousted by Hezbollah from power), he will need to show that he’s not being pushed around and that he’s taking full advantage of the powers of the (Sunni) Prime Ministerial seat. To complicate matters, Mr. Hariri has raided his backyard in Tripoli and has shown that he has enormous support in that city. This resulted in even more pressure for Mr. Mikati to show his cojones, typically by picking fights against General Aoun, a hate-figure in Tripoli.

If you add various other reasons like regional instability and the role of the very small parties in the next government, you’ll understand why Lebanon will remain for quite some time without a government. But the question most people are asking by now is this: Why did Mr. Mikati thrust himself into this thankless mess? The problem for him is that if he resigns now, he will be politically burned but everything else will remain the same.