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.

"I Hate Syria" Is Not a Political Platform

It's election season in Lebanon, and what normal democracies expect from their politicians at a time like this is statements about their political platforms. We should expect to hear what they will do to make our lives better.

But in Lebanon these elusive platforms are all but missing from the political debate. And with our multi-party cabinet taking almost all its decisions unanimously, it is hard to see why we should vote for one party over another. Yesterday was the first time we saw a real disagreement in the cabinet over appointing the head of the election campaign supervisory committee. Al-Nahar reported that the opposition used its veto for the first time. (By the way this is simply not true. The question at hand was not one that opposition were allowed to veto: their veto only applies to decisions on "basic national matters," and the real reason the opposition's opposition influenced the final decision was that President Suleiman did not call for a vote until the opposition was satisfied (way to be neutral Mr. President)).

In any case, currently the choice of head for the election campaign supervisory committee is all we really have to go by when choosing who to vote for this year... Well, that and how much they like Syria. In fact, the Syria factor seems to be the core of the election campaign on both sides. With Jumblatt essentially telling us to vote for him or Ghazi Kanaan will come and eat our children at night, and Aoun going around telling us to vote for him so he can make love to Bashar Al-Asad more effectively, I wonder how the average non-affiliated Lebanese will be able to make a decision (if such a person exists at all).

But it's not completely hopeless, every once in a while we do hear some concrete ideas. Michel Aoun recently proposed a national defense strategy whereby resistance elements will be placed in villages and towns all over Lebanon creating something of a national militia, similar to Hezbollah's method, but nation-wide. I frankly think this is a terrible idea simply because I don't trust the Lebanese with weapon caches in their villages.

And just yesterday Aoun's arch-nemesis Geagea also teased us with a vague reference to his own national defense strategy that he intends to present at the next dialogue meeting. He makes an obscure reference to some strategy based on historic precedent namely, the case of Switzerland during World War II and how it managed to avoid attack. Great! Now as soon as Geagea clears his strategy up we will have two solutions to the same problem and we can vote based on whichever of these makes more sense to us...

Right?... Not exactly. From what I understand, the Swiss defense strategy is one of a nation-wide militia with every male citizen between the ages of 19 and 31 keeping a military rifle in their homes, ready to mobilize at a moment's notice. So is this what Geagea is gonna propose? (It's either that or that Lebanon should keep making economic concessions to our enemies and allow our banks to store Nazi gold, which is the only other reason why Switzerland wasn't attacked during the war.) But if this IS what he will propose, to me it sounds painfully similar to Aoun's proposal of a nation-wide Hezbollah-style defense militia.

So even on the most divisive issue, these two arch-enemies seem unable to present significantly different proposals to allow for decent electoral decision making. The only thing more depressing than that is that even with such similar initial proposals, the two sides will probably never agree.

So where does that leave us? Well it leaves us with an easy approach to decide who to vote for: grab the nearest picture of Bashar Al-Assad you can find, stare at it for a moment, if you suddenly feel afraid, angry, nauseous or generally uneasy, then you're better off voting for March 14, otherwise you might find it more suitable to vote for the Tayyar-Hezbollah group.

"Chaos" is Not the Answer

Shortly after arriving home, Sheikh Saleh Aridi, member of the Democratic Party and aide to Talal Urslan, got into his car at 9:30 p.m. last night, and that was the last thing he did. 500 grams of TNT, placed under the driver's seat of the car, exploded killing Aridi and wounding several others.

Given that this assassination has come during a period that has seen the most positive political atmosphere since longer than a lot of us care to remember - a day after President Suleiman announced the beginning of national reconciliation dialogue on the 16th of September, Hariri's peace tour that included a reconciliation agreement in Tripoli with Bekaa as his next stop, Nasrallah's reaching out to Al-Mustaqbal, Jumblatt's reconciliatory rhetoric, and even Geagea's belief that dialogue could lead to coexistence with Hezboallah - it is easy to argue that those behind the attack are targeting national reconciliation and are only interested in maintaining a state of chaos in Lebanon.

Jumblatt accused "those who are hurt by reconciliation" (Al-Mustaqbal). PM Sanioura said the attack was meant "to divide the Lebanese," and Speaker Berri said it is a message "against civil peace in Lebanon" (Naharnet). Urslan also said the perpetrators are those who would benefit from internal civil strife in Lebanon, but he went further and directly named Israel as his prime suspect (As-Safir).

Though I'm glad Lebanese politicians agree (more or less) on something for a change, I myself find it hard to believe that someone who is against civil peace in Lebanon would go and do something like that. If the main goal is simply to divide the society and slow down reconciliation, there are far easier (and I daresay more effective) ways of doing so than a highly-professional and surgically precise assassination of one particular politician. If the goal is to target civil peace, the perpetrators would find it easier commit one or more arbitrary acts of terrorism aimed at groups of people rather than target an individual. I'm not gonna give any ideas, but I think you know what I mean.

I think there's more to this than just "someone spreading chaos." You don't spread chaos with 500g of TNT under the seat of someone's car. The questions we need to ask ourselves are: Who is Saleh Aridi? What has he done in his life? What was he doing when he was killed? Who would want him dead? Maybe if we try to answer these questions instead of yelling out "chaos", we might know where to begin looking for the murderers.

Photo by AFP taken from BBC.