Ayoon Wa Azan ( I Judge Against What I Heard )
Jihad el-Khazen Al-Hayat - 03/07/07//
I was trying to organize my ideas on the conditions prevailing in Lebanon after I had heard opinions from both sides of the on-going crisis when I came across the words of former prime minister Najib Mikati mentioned in the speech he delivered in the commencement exercises at the American University of Beirut. This was exactly what I wanted. Indeed he said that neither dependence on nor subordination to foreign players is useful, nor is the pattern of stubbornness and arrogance at home beneficial. There is no substitute for genuine cooperation based on trust in running the affairs of the country and in dealing with the crises it is going through .
I had already met some friends in the Hizbullah leadership in a long night session and I judge against what I heard from them with what I had heard from friends belonging to the March 14 Movement. I was about to be misled by the details. If there are three or four or five items on the agenda, each of those items needs an mediation of its own by the Arab League and its secretary general Amr Moussa.
After hearing both parties I called our friend the assistant Secretary General of Hizbullah and he confirmed my feeling that the details of each item need an agreement. However, he asserted that Arab mediation would carry on as the situation in Lebanon can not be left in its present state that endangers the future of the country.
The solution starts with the formation of a national unity government and Hizbullah wants the discussion to start at the point reached by the Saudi ambassador Dr Abdel Aziz Khoja whom I had called from Beirut while he was in Jeddah. Khoja shares the same anxiety with Amr Moussa over the situation in Lebanon and its precariousness. The original ministerial manifesto remains as it is while Hizbullah does not accept a priori conditions such as the abstention from resignation. It also asks for reconsidering cabinet decisions taken in the absence of the five Shiite ministers, except for the decision regarding the international tribunal.
If we consider that what is said above is the first point of the discussion, the second point would be the creation of the conditions necessary for the election of a new president of the republic by the constitutional deadline. And since such efforts will be exerted by second-rank representatives, they are not expected to suggest names; they are rather expected to lay the groundwork. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had told the Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and the accompanying delegation that the presidency of the republic is a question of destiny.
Our friends in the Hizbullah leadership said to me, 'Our candidate is General Michel Aoun and no one else.' They also said there is supposed to be Maronite agreement under the auspices of Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir on the name of the president, the same way the Sunnis agree on the name of the prime minister and the Shiites agree on the name of the speaker of the house.
The third item, as I heard it from Hizbullah, is their assertion of the decisions taken during the national dialogue sessions and pertaining to security and to Lebanon's safety and stability.
The devil definitely lies in the details. The condition of abstaining from resignation (in reality Hizbullah made it conditional not to impose this condition on its ministers) is related to the constitutional conditions in the event the term of the president of the republic comes to an end before the election of a new president. The latter's prerogatives are transferred to the cabinet, according to the constitution which also stipulates that if the cabinet loses one-third of its members it is considered a resigned one. This means that the allocation of the ministerial seats by the 19/11 formula leads to the cabinet's downfall in case the ministers representing Amal and Hizbullah resign.
Hizbullah does not want to see the prerogatives of both the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister in the hands of a provisional government headed by our friend Fuad Siniora due to the disagreement with him. Yet, the prerogatives of the provisional government do not carry weight that justifies anxiety or fear. Though I am not a constitutional expert like late Walid Eido, I remember that the constitution stipulates that such a government is expected to be a caretaker government on a small scale. What is meant here is managing the daily affairs of the citizens without taking major decisions until a principal government is formed.
All this takes me back to the words of the Hizbullah Secretary General on the foreign dimension to the Lebanese crisis and the need for the Lebanese to take matters in their own hands, and to the emphasis by former prime minister Mikati in front of the university graduates on the importance of genuine trust-based cooperation among the different parties.
I do not think that the two main camps will soon recover their confidence in each other. All the options are possible and range from a constitutional crisis to a national unity government to the rise of two governments that result in the country's division, and from a country without a president to a consensus president. I have heard many common names of candidates including Nassib Lahoud, Boutros Harb, Nayla Muawad, Charles Rizk, General Michel Sleiman, Riad Salameh, Jean Obeid, and Fares Boueiz. The consensus president means that it is no single party's favorite, therefore I discard General Michel Aoun and the first four names. I hope that one of the other four will strike lucky, knowing that the nomination of the Army Commander or the Central Bank Governor, both of whom are first-grade officials, requires a constitutional amendment, as was the case with president Lahoud when the constitution was amended in order to extend his mandate.
In the absence of easing of tension and with a view to averting an explosion, I will not object and for the first time in my life, to the proclamation of a state of emergency and to the assumption of power by the army for a limited period of time that does not exceed a couple of months during which a consensus president can be chosen, which paves the way for the formation of a national unity government.
Today the army is the only institution in the country around which all the Lebanese are rallied and in which they have confidence. I believe that the army will see the majority of the Lebanese on its side once it decides to hold the reins, before control is lost à la Iraq.
What encourages me to talk in this way is the army solidarity and the unity among its soldiers in the face of serious security challenges that have risen in the past two months. However, I have apprehensions that the pressure of the state of emergency and the transitional period could be beyond the army's ability to bear, especially if domestic pressure is accompanied by foreign intervention.
I can say that 'the last remedy is cauterization', i.e. firmness, and that a temporary state of emergency under the army supervision could be the way out.
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