The Majority Delusion

There are many reasons to criticize Aoun's inflexibility on the issue of the cabinet formation, some more meaningful than others. Some say he's putting his ego and his personal or family interests ahead of the interest of his community and his country. Some are a bit more forgiving and say it's his political party not his personal interests that is being treated to a free ride at the expense of the nation. It's not easy, if one wishes it, to argue against these claims (or for them for that matter) as they are derived from complex political analysis and reasoning and more often than not fueled by subjective and nonrational opinions. The validity of these claims thus ends up in the intractable realm of the unprovable and the unfalsifiable.

There are, however, those who criticize Aoun's stubbornness by claiming he doesn't have the right to make the demands he's making, that since he lost the elections, the constitution requires him to just sit back and let the winners make the government as they please, and that with Hariri having already made enough compromise by giving in to the 15-10-5 formula (15 pro-majority ministers, 10 pro-opposition, and 5 neutral selected by the president), the opposition no longer has the right to pin up these demands. They even go to the extent of believing, with some degree of delusion might I add, that the only reason Hariri is even humoring Aoun's demands, rather than just making up his own government, is out of fear of military repercussions from Hezbollah's mighty militia, akin to what happened in May of 2008. This argument, being based on the legality of the demands rather than their morality, is quite easy to validate. In fact, the facts on the ground point undeniably to one conclusion: ugly though these demands may be to some, they are perfectly legal and have absolutely no need for either extortion with military threats or enforcement by foreign backing.

I do like to say here, that I'm not a big fan of the way the issue is being handled by the opposition, and I certainly am not saying Aoun should be doing things the way he is. I'm simply here to make the case that he has the right to, whether we like it or not.

Simply put, Hariri does not have the constitutional authority to ignore Aoun's demands, and this is precisely why he chose to resign rather than ignore them. Ignoring them was simply not a legal option, and it still isn't. It's true that Hariri's camp won the elections, but we all know what happened after that. Jumblatt, along with his ten MPs broke off from the March 14 group, and although they didn't join the ranks of the opposition, they certainly can no longer be counted among Hariri's coalition. This means that Hariri now controls 60 of the 128 seats in parliament, which leaves 68 MPs outside of his control. For any government proposed by Hariri to get parliamentary confidence, some of these non-Hariri MPs have to vote for it. Now given that Jumblatt is adamant about the 15-10-5 formula, and obviously the 57 opposition MPs won't have anything to do with a government that doesn't adhere to it, how exactly can one perceive Hariri's adoption of this formula as some sort of compromise on his part? And we haven't even mentioned the role of the President, whose signature on the cabinet formation is needed to make it valid, and who on more than one occasion said he won't agree to a cabinet that does not get approval of the opposition.

So in short, Hariri's agreement to form a national unity government does not stem solely from his desire to be collegial and conciliatory. It also stems from the fact that he simply doesn't have enough friends in parliament or in the presidential palace to legally do anything else. This makes the 15-10-5 requirement a matter of fact rather than compromise. And although Hariri "won" the elections, Aoun's demands now have the implicit backing of the president as well as the majority of parliament, which makes them as legal as they can possibly get short of being a matter of national consensus.

So unless Hariri is willing to step aside and let someone else take over, he has to figure out a way to strike a deal with Aoun and his allies about their demands. And in that case, he should accept that the 15-10-5 formula is the starting point of negotiations and not the middle ground he has been claiming it is. Aoun's demands need to be dealt with seriously and not be dismissed as the ravings of an egotistical mad man... But, yeah, that doesn't mean he's not an asshole.