Analysts doubt Hariri will be able to form government

Analysts doubt Hariri will be able to form government

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=106623

Regional relations still seen as hindrance to cabinet formation
By Michael Bluhm Daily Star staff Friday, September 18, 2009

BEIRUT: Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri’s prospects appear even bleaker for forming a government in his second stint in the post, a number of analysts told The Daily Star on Thursday. With unaltered internal and external obstacles to creating a cabinet, Lebanon will likely endure a much longer wait for a new administration after the June general elections, said Hilal Khashan, head of the department of political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut.

President Michel Sleiman renamed Hariri prime minister-designate on Wednesday, after the Future Movement chief was tabbed by 73 of Parliament’s 128 deputies. Hariri had resigned the post on September 10 after fruitless cabinet talks lasting since June.

“I don’t see a cabinet being formed any time soon,” he said. “I don’t see it on the horizon. There is no reason to believe [Hariri] will succeed now where he failed before.

“There is a domestic standoff, and there is a regional standoff.”

With the undiminished internal polarization between Lebanon’s March 14 and March 8 political camps, as well as the unflinching Middle East deadlock pitting the US and its regional allies against Iran and Syria, the reappointment of Hariri as prime minister-designate only completes the impression that nothing has changed, said Habib Malek, who teaches history at Lebanese American University and is the son of former Minister Charles Malek

“It’s like Groundhog Day,” he said. “It’s back to square one.”
In Lebanon the most prominent conflict has centered on the reappointment of caretaker Telecommunications Minister Jebran Bassil of the March 8’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), and this hurdle only looms larger because Hariri and FPM head MP Michel Aoun refused to budge on the matter during Hariri’s first round as premier-designate, said retired General Elias Hanna, who teaches political science at Notre Dame University.

“It’s more difficult than before,” he said.

Hariri “will not be able to form the government. It’s going to take a long period of time.

“There’s no politics in Lebanon today because nobody is ready to make a compromise.”

The cabinet vacuum will persist also because Sleiman has not yet been able to live up to his frequent pledges to serve as a non-partisan figure capable of achieving consensus between rival factions, Hanna added.

For his part, Hariri has been lengthening the odds of settling on a government by sounding a less conciliatory tone in his comments since resigning, although his first unsuccessful crack at cabinet formation has only left him in a less advantageous negotiating position, said Malek.

“He’s weaker than he was the first time around, but he seems to be upping the ante with his rhetoric,” Malek added. “He hasn’t even started yet, and he has a track record of failure.”

Hariri’s defiant posture might also serve as an attempt to preempt any March 8 calculations of his weakness by demonstrating that Hariri remains March 14’s unquestioned leader and that the March 14 coalition stands as unanimously as ever behind him, said Hanna. March 14 had been thoroughly rattled by the defection of Progressive Socialist Party head MP Walid Jumblatt shortly after the June vote.

“It is like a reassertion of March 14 unity,” Hanna said. Hariri “proved that he still represents the majority. He showed that the majority is still a majority, despite Jumblatt.”