Global Arab Network | Saad Hariri - New Government and Old Problems in Lebanon

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Saad Hariri - New Government and Old Problems in Lebanon

Wednesday, 16 December 2009 11:35

Nearly six months after its general election, Lebanon has a government in place, with Prime Minister Saad Hariri's national unity cabinet gaining approval in early November, though unity by no means guarantees stability.

While there had been agreement for months over forming a broad-based government including representatives from the main opposition parties, with a general understanding of how many ministers each bloc would have, the forming of the cabinet was delayed by intense wrangling over which portfolios would be allocated to members of the various disparate groupings.

As it stands, the cabinet contains 15 ministers of the March 14 bloc or its supporters under Hariri, with 10 more from the March 8 group made up of Hizbullah and its allies, and a further five nominated by President Michel Suleiman.

The effectiveness of the cabinet on crucial issues is questionable because Hizbullah's strength will effectively veto legislation it does not like. Already there are some signs the cabinet may need the attention of a skilled fitter and joiner, such is the extent of the early cracks appearing in the woodwork.

The convoluted process of negotiating a consensus agreement between the various parties, which broke down more than once, combined with a series of compromises to accommodate Hizbullah and its allies, has resulted in a degree of unease among many, especially within the March 14 bloc.

Foremost of these accommodations is allowing Hizbullah to keep its arsenal, including up to 40,000 rockets, and thousands of men under arms. Some of the March 14 groups see this as continuing to give what is tantamount to state endorsement of Hizbullah's militia as an alternative armed force to the national defence forces and, as such, weakening national sovereignty and making the entire country vulnerable to Israeli attack should Hizbullah unilaterally launch operations against the Hebrew state.

On November 26, Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces, which has two ministers in the cabinet, said that, "Illegitimate arms contradict the national pact of coexistence and Hizbullah's possession of weapons in its current form is not legitimate".

Hizbullah's very presence in the government is also a bone of contention with Israel, with a number of senior officials saying that including in the cabinet representatives of the group it fought an armed conflict with in 2006 was intolerable. Most recent of these comments came from Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, who on November 24 said Tel Aviv would not accept having Hizbullah as part of the Lebanese government. Significantly, Barak openly warned that the Lebanese government as a whole would be held accountable for any military action carried out by Hizbullah. In 2006, Israeli air strikes wreaked havoc with Lebanon's infrastructure, as well as killing 1200 people in bombing raids, the majority of them civilians.

Closer to home, the cabinet will have other battles to fight, including the need to overhaul creaky state enterprises and cut debt. Though much of the Lebanese economy has survived the global financial crisis well, with the banking sector performing strongly and the central bank's fiscal reserves at record levels, public debt levels remain at around $50bn, about 162% of GDP. How to prune this debt, while at the same time promoting development, will be one of the government's thorniest issues.

Though Hariri has promised his government will forge a new economic order, one which will be open, transparent and allow all Lebanese to prosper, direction of the economy is expected to be another front in the struggle within the cabinet.

Even as the prime minister was telling delegates attending the annual conference Union of Arab Banks, held in Beirut on November 20, that the new government was not only politically unified but was also a social development and economic unity government, fractures were appearing in the image of a cabinet undivided on economic policy.

On November 17, Charbel Nahhas, speaking at a ceremony to mark his taking over as communications minister, appeared to rule out the privatisation of state-owned telcos, telling reporters that selling the telecommunications monopoly "will never happen". Nahhas, a member of Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement and his son-in-law, said instead he would focus on increasing the value of the sector, which he described as productive and profitable. It also means that Hizbullah's private communications network, a bedrock of its military successes against Israeli forces, is unlikely to be touched.

Profitable and growing at an annual rate of 5-7% it may be, but Lebanon has made a firm commitment as part of its agreements at the Paris III aid conference to sell off both the two mobile phone networks in the country and also the state's landline monopoly, with the government looking to earn up to $6bn from the privatisation of the cellular networks.

It is expected that there will also be sharp differences of opinion and policy in some other key economic portfolios, including energy and water, where the state power monopoly Electricité du Liban (EdL) is expected to lose $1.5bn this year, and is unable to provide electricity to much of the country on a regular basis. Various options, many of them unpopular, have been mooted to fix what is wrong with EdL, including making massive investments, slashing staff numbers, a stronger push to collect charges and even selling the utility in whole or part.

Politically diverse the elements of Lebanon's unity government may be, but the very fact that a cabinet has been formed is an achievement in itself, though Hariri will have to prove himself to be a deft carpenter to find the right glue to keep the cabinet together.

Global Arab Network

This article is published in partnership with Oxford Business Group

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