It is a new definition of the current crisis in Lebanon.
The “Lebanese National Opposition” proclamation that it is now demanding a new election law and new early elections is not a superficial slogan change. It is a new definition of the current crisis in Lebanon.
While the “Guarantor Third” demand is connected to the recent revelations, the new position put the finger on a much deeper wound, that is, the process with which the “Taif Agreement” was implemented since the beginning of the nineties with Syrian supervision.
In the shadow of the Syrian Guardianship, and with its supervision, a Lebanese political regime with an overwhelming Muslim predominance playing the central role in determining the national decision was born. The other side of this predominance was the marginalization of the Christian opposition, which represents, for sure, a majority in its own community. This reality was legalized through a series of election laws and grotesque administrative election redistricting resulting in complete falsification of the demographic realities and of the true political representations. In short: The violation of the spirit of the “Taif Agreement”
The Syrian Guardianship over Lebanon sponsored, and for its own interests, three major central projects: Resistance against Israel, “Harirism” as a plan for reconstruction and the reunification of institutions, with special attention to the armed forces. Although these projects fulfill confirmed Lebanese interests, it must be said that they, these projects, including “Harirism”, would not have been possible, in the form we came to know them, without the Syrian role.
Under the guardianship, the function of the political regime was to protect these projects. Therefore, with the ebb this guardianship, we witnessed the big plan’s eruption to its essential elements accompanied by “Harirism” expansion towards politics and also the entrance of the resistance into politics. As for the army, it is staying neutral and it may become a subject of contention, at the time that a semi-public is raging for the control of other security institutions.
The eruption of the big plan occurred because of what preceded, accompanied and followed the withdrawal of the Syrian forces from Lebanon. It was possible to delay the effects of this eruption for a time through the “Quartette Alliance” that included the main forces which evolved under the previous era and it looked as if it were possible to continue the same policy without Damascus but not against it. This alliance soon fell apart as a result of its contradictions, the rising level of regional and international tugging over Lebanon and unresolved sediments in the Syrian behavior towards Lebanon.
A close examiner of this “Quartette Alliance” observes that it kept an essential element of the previous regime: The marginalization of the most influential political force in the Christian community. That was embodied with absolute clarity in the concordance reached on the approval of the year 2000 election law and the extension of its validity through 2005. Under these circumstances, it was natural that the Christian candidate members of this alliance faced the defeat they met and that the clear expression is formulated: The balance after the guardianship can not be, almost literally, the balance of the guardianship reign.
Although its political and security maintenance instrument ebbed and withdrew, the previous imbalance moved to the new regime. But the election alliance cracked quickly after having produced a parliamentary and governmental majority. And here is where the current remaining majority committed its strategic error with the increase of the original imbalance by adding the marginalization of a wide Shi’a community, believing in its capability to hold power and impose radical choices backed by a narrow social base with Arab and International support.
This imbalance transcends the crisis manifestations and its proposed solution articulated by the “Guarantor Third”. It is true that a government of “National Unity” is a step in the right direction. But it is a step that, in the best of circumstances, will not be able to produce more than an armistice that lasts weeks, or months and collapses at Presidential Elections time. This is because the controlling wing of the “March 14 Movement” does not conceal that it wants a President from its own ranks that is, definitionaly, a President expressing a mood distant from the community he is supposed to come from.
The governing wing of the “March 14 Movement” did abandon Abdul Halim Khaddam’s theory about the administration of the Lebanese affair (how can it abandon it at the height of its alliance with the “Syrian Opposition Outside [of Syria]”?).
The opinion Khaddam used to publicly express is that Lebanon can not be governed except with strong Muslim representatives and a weak Christian representative. The extended Elias Hrawi Presidency was an applied paradigm for this school [of thought].
It is worth noting here that what changed during Bashar Al-Assad reign is the bringing of a President that is backed and supported, albeit some what isolated in his community. Even so, this did not meet with acceptance from the Lebanese “Muslims of Syria” specifically those who, today, are turning into peerless “Sovereigntists” without equals.
What these latter ones reject, exactly, and relative to the internal balance, is the secession of a whole community from them and its formation of an alliance with another community, and the joint demand of both communities for a weighty opinion in running the affairs of the nation. And there is no way to the reproduction of this balance except through the formation of the political life starting from the mother institution: The Parliament.
This demand became the slogan of the “Lebanese National Opposition”. A slogan in whose horizon shines a division of power and a right of ownership of a word effective in both internal and external affairs of the nation.
The aforementioned slogan has a virtue, in addition to its justice, which is that it truly is comfortable for the “Free Patriotic Movement” [led by General Aoun], the representative of the aggrieved for the last decade and a half. This slogan, in this sense, is disturbing to the sectarian ruling team because of its ability to create allies amongst those that have no serious representation.
It is not farfetched, in light of this new slogan, that we witness an increasing Christian focalization for General Michel Aoun. A focalization that answers the marginalization attempt, demands wider participation, and based on the serious fears ignited by the sectarian mobilization campaign lead by “Tayyar Al Mustaqbal”, be receptive to the “Muslim Allies” of the “Free Patriotic Movement” who took the initiative in calling for a just election law to abolish the distortions of previous laws.
If some advance was to occur, and there is nothing to prevent its occurrence, Lebanon would enter in a truly new phase, the phase of shedding the most significant faults of the Syrian guardianship period, the phase of blocking the road to the inheritance of this guardianship, by an internal group, and to the power monopolization in the name of continuous sovereignty.
The irony, all the irony, is that the internal termination of the Syrian guardianship era will be fulfilled at the hands of the forces accused of being “agents” to Damascus or of collusion with it.