More than a week after Lebanon tumbled into its political vacuum, there are no signs of the presidential space being filled. Doomsday predictions may have abated for the time being, but there are growing fears that the stalemate will not be broken on Dec. 7, the last date set for a vote for a new president after six delays. In all previous attempts, Parliament has failed to muster the two-thirds quorum necessary to elect a president, and signs suggest the failure could happen again.
Neither the government nor the opposition could agree on who should succeed Emile Lahoud, and while Lebanon’s army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman has emerged as the latest candidate for the post, even while enjoying the support of prominent opposition figure Michel Aoun, Aoun’s conditions — which include the appointment of a neutral prime minister — have previously been rejected by the governing coalition. So Lebanon might return to square one, but the addition to the dangerous power vacuum is the growing sense of alienation among the once-powerful Maronite Christians. During its 15-year civil war, Lebanon became a playground for foreign machinations of all kinds. The current political problem could once again expose the extent to which Lebanon can be prey to outside meddling and plotting. Hence, this largely domestic issue has become both a regional and an international affair. The US, Russia, Syria and Iran are all intensely involved and there was a great deal of diplomatic shuttling between Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Paris just before the end of Emile Lahoud’s term. The shuttling will very likely continue.
Lebanon’s presidential palace now stands empty for the first time in the country’s troubled history. How long the country can take this political polarization and high level of sectarian tension is unclear. The stalemate could conceivably last weeks or months, all the way to the parliamentary elections in 2008. And when remembering that under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, all the country’s presidents must be Maronite Christians, no-one can say for sure how long the country’s Maronites can withstand — what is to them — an unacceptable decline in their traditional power.
But at least there is calm. It is becoming clear that even while both the opposition and pro-government forces remain keen to maintain the status quo, fortunately neither party wants to resort to violence as a means of ending the crisis. Although when Lahoud departed, he referred to the threat of a state of emergency and entrusted the country’s security to the army, he made no attempt to form a parallel government as many had feared, for that would surely have instigated armed confrontations. However, it is still possible for violence to flare up anytime in any country without a president and without a functioning Parliament. Lebanon currently is filled with tension and is in a state of political paralysis — not too far off could be actual hostilities. The sooner the country finds a new leader, the better.
