Time for Lebanon to Prove it Deserves to Determine Its Own Destiny

 

By John R. Bolton

Lebanon – The Daily Star — So far, so good: The “ice-breaking” session in Lebanon’s Parliament on Tuesday worked out as well as anyone could have dared to hope.

There was the usual showmanship, of course, but the participants engaged in far less rhetorical bravado than many had anticipated, and there were no acts of violence. Best of all, some members of even the staunchest components of the ruling March 14 coalition indicated at last that they were ready to consider consensus as a means of selecting the country’s next president.

Now, though, a series of clocks have begun to tick, and since the government and the opposition operate on different schedules, the very passage of time has become the deadliest enemy of both – and of the Lebanese people.

This is because, despite the intense glare of media attention focused on the presidency, agreeing on who gets to be the next occupant of Baabda Palace is only one step in a complicated dance ordained by the Constitution and entrenched by tradition. As the case of Emile Lahoud clearly demonstrates, a Lebanese president with whom a Cabinet refuses to work might as well become a hermit.

Any deal on the presidential issue, therefore, demands that similar and almost simultaneous agreements be reached on the “Cabinet statement” that will establish the platform of the next government – and on the numbers of ministries accorded to various parties. Needless to say, this figures to require calculations of greater complexity than the identity of a single president, especially since the latter might end up being a non-entity by mutual consent.

This kind of horse-trading is as old as the Lebanese Republic itself, but many of the rules have changed, and the stakes have never been higher: Both sides are still heavily influenced by their respective foreign patrons, but the fact of the matter is that no previous generation of Lebanese politicians has had nearly so much autonomy to make the kinds of decisions required in the next few weeks. http://www.dailystar.com.lb

This is not necessarily good news. Convicts released after long prison terms, for example, are known to re-offend so they can return to the familiar confines of a cell, and battered wives who leave their husbands frequently return to their abusers. Here, then, is the test: Can Lebanon’s politicians chart their own course without sinking the boat?

Their track record over the past couple of years is not encouraging, which means that private citizens, civil society, and the business community cannot afford to wait for the next parliamentary polls to make their feelings known. They must speak out – clearly, frequently, and loudly – to demand that their elected representatives negotiate an end to the impasse and prove that Lebanon can survive on its own.