Lebanon experienced a surge of optimism with the parliament's election of Michel Aoun as president on 31 October, and hopes were pinned on the rapid formation of a cabinet under Saad Al-Hariri, the leader of the Future Current, who was appointed prime minister after an historic deal with his former adversary. However, more than 20 days down the line, the optimism has begun to dwindle in the face of a tug-of-war among the political parties and religious dominations over their shares in the cabinet. If the devil is in the details, this devil is very big indeed as Lebanon has 18 religious denominations represented by dozens of parties, all of them with their eyes set on a piece of the pie. With the historic settlement between Aoun and Al-Hariri and before that the understanding reached between Aoun and his former Christian adversary Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces Party, the conflict has shifted from the customary facedown between the 8 March Coalition, headed by the Shia group Hizbullah, Aoun's Movement and the Amal Movement, and the 14 March Coalition, headed by the Future Trend and the Lebanese Forces Party, to a tussle over government seats and an array of tangential conflicts that are crossing old divides. The new situation in Lebanon inaugurated by the agreement between Aoun and Al-Hariri, the Christian-Christian agreement between Geagea and Aoun, and the old Aoun and Hizbullah alliance, could be hampered by disputes between Geagea and Hizbullah. It has been rumoured that Hizbullah opposes handing key cabinet posts to the Lebanese Forces Party because the latter concluded the reconciliation that paved the way to Aoun's election as president. This places Aoun in an awkward position as he tries to please his new ally, the Lebanese Forces, and his old one, Hizbullah. Saad Al-Hariri, leader of the Future Current, is in a similar position. He needs to satisfy his new friend, head of the Marada Movement Suleiman Frangieh, who is also an ally of Hizbullah. Frangieh has his hopes set on a key ministry, but he is not viewed amicably by Aoun after having turned from an ally and a member of Aoun's bloc into a rival contender for the presidency. At the same time, Geagea, who has a long-standing enmity to the Frangieh family, does not want to include the Marada Movement in the new government either. Geagea has stated that he wants a government of parties that supported the nomination of Aoun for the presidency, which implicitly excludes Frangieh. Geagea's stance has been denounced by both Nabih Berri of the Amal Movement and Hizbullah, as Frangieh is the closest Christian ally to their parties and to Syria. But even the Future Current did not welcome this step which threatens the new-found friendship between Future Current leader Al-Hariri and Frangieh. The latter could bear further fruit in the form of co-ordination or even an alliance in the parliamentary elections in northern Lebanon. Speaker of the parliament Nabih Berri, although he has facilitated political initiatives and acted as a mediator between Lebanon's two largest parties, the Future Current and Hizbullah, when it comes to divvying up cabinet posts is always adamant on receiving his full quota, unlike his ally Hizbullah. Berri owes a large portion of his popularity among Lebanon's Shia community to the services he provides through his share of ministerial and other political positions. In this new period, which arrived in spite of his opposition to Aoun's nomination as president, Berri will still want his share and will insist on retaining the country's Finance Ministry in particular. He opposes the rotation of cabinet portfolios among the parties and denominations and argues that the Christian Maronites enjoy the power to sign executive decrees through their representative who serves as president of the republic, something that also applies to the country's Sunni Muslims through their representative who serves as prime minister. This leaves the Lebanese Shia with only the post of minister of finance, and he only has the power to sign decrees of a financial nature. The wrangling over cabinet posts has thus occasioned a shift from the familiar polarisation between the forces that support the Syrian regime and those that are opposed to it to a Christian-Shia polarisation in the light of the Shia leader's refusal to hand the Ministry of Finance portfolio to the Lebanese Forces Party. One expression of this was seen in the altercation between Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council for Lebanese Shia Muslims, sheikh Abdel-Amir Qablan and the Maronite patriarch cardinal Bichara Boutros Al-Rahi. During a visit by Aoun to the seat of the Maronite patriarchate, Al-Rahi said that “under no circumstances should a ‘basket of conditions' be substituted by formulas for clinging to ministerial portfolios and the use of a ‘veto' by one camp against another.” “This would violate the constitution and the National Accord [the Taif Agreement] and would introduce conventions that would open the door to others to reciprocate in kind and obstruct the path to the establishment of a state based on rights and the rule of law,” Al-Rahi said. Qablan responded by saying that Lebanon's “Shia Muslims have always been and remain the keenest of all on the establishment of a state based on justice and equality. They have made all possible sacrifices in order to ensure the success of constitutional processes and political stability.” “The Shia have long been downtrodden, oppressed and deprived even of the right to defend their own areas. We are only hearing the words we are hearing today because we are now demanding a real share in power,” Qablan said. He said that when the confessional system of government in Lebanon was abolished, the Shia would be the first to rejoice. “We have spared no effort and passed up no opportunity to realise genuine partnership between all political and religious components in Lebanon so that the country can remain one that embraces all its people,” he said. “We have always striven to reduce impediments to this new order. This is why we urged the realisation of new understandings in the framework of a comprehensive set of solutions in order to avert needless crises and dispel the dark clouds from the skies of the nation.” Hizbullah did not intervene in the altercation between its allies, but it did hint that it would be satisfied with fewer government portfolios. It also voiced a desire that could aggravate the formation of the new cabinet, saying that it would like to see ministries handed to the small parties allied with it that are staunchly pro-Syrian. Among these is the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, reputed for its fiery rhetoric and poor relations with many of the country's main political forces, notably the Future Current. The Druze appear dissatisfied with their share in the cabinet, especially now that they want to bring on board the Democratic Party headed by Talal Arslan in addition to the Progressive Socialist Party headed by senior Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The cake may have to be divided into even smaller pieces in view of the desire of both the Future Current and the Amal Movement to include the Kataeb Party (or Phalange), the oldest Christian party. The Kataeb had not supported Aoun as candidate for the presidency, but it is now flirting with him now that he has become president. As for the Sunnis, Al-Hariri, who holds the premiership on their behalf, is undoubtedly determined to ensure the success of the government he has been charged with creating. But he is under pressure from within his own Future Current, weary of internal disputes, to satisfy constituencies such as the marginalised Sunni areas in the north of the country and in Tripoli. These tensions have led the prime minister to contemplate increasing the size of the government to 30 ministers instead of the previously announced 24. This solution could reduce the difficulties he faces in forming the cabinet, but it will not eliminate them entirely. These difficulties emanate from the political, demographic and even psychological character of the Lebanese people, who are famed for being highly skilled negotiators and deft at playing all their available cards, including by using brinksmanship. If the recent agreements have worked to free the political contest in the country from its regional and international dimensions and above all the Saudi-Iranian and Sunni-Shia conflicts and the Russian-US rivalry behind them, Lebanon's domestic political, sectarian and regional maze is still difficult to navigate. What sustains hope in the eventual formation of a government is that the main parties behind the election of Aoun – the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces Party, the Future Current and even Hizbullah – are all eager to ensure its success and to form new alliances while preserving old ones. These forces only have to offer concessions to the political forces that see themselves as being disadvantaged by the election of Aoun and that are now flirting with the allies who brought the new president to power. Whatever the shape of the new government will be, it will not be the government of the victors in the presidential elections that played out between two of Hizbullah's allies. It will be a government that applies the old Lebanese saying that “if there are no winners, there can also be no losers.” This spirit was expressed by head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Aoun's son-in-law Gebran Bassil, who said that the understandings his movement had made with Hizbullah, followed by the Lebanese Forces and then with the Future Current, were lasting and not transient. Only the coming days will tell whether Aoun, who fought against almost everyone during the Lebanese Civil War and then clashed politically with almost everyone after he returned from exile in 2006, will prove to be the patron of the new understandings that could lead to the formation of a national unity government.
