Musical Chairs in Lebanon: Shiites, Maronites and Sunnis.
By: Joseph Hitti

November 26/07

After this week's events in Lebanon, the top post in the country is not occupied by a Maronite for the first time since Lebanon's independence in 1943. Now that Lahoud is gone (and good riddance to this lackey of the Syrians), Siniora, the Sunni Prime Minister (a lackey of the Americans) is now running the country.

Under the unwritten 1943 National Pact, the post of President was allocated to the Maronite Christians, the No. 2 post of Speaker of Parliament was allocated to the Shiite Moslems, and the No. 3 post of Prime Minister is allocated to the Sunni Moslems. Then in the 1989 Taif Agreement, which was imposed on Lebanon by the Americans (and their European poodles) who were then too keen to brown-nose themselves with the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, the arrangement in the National Pact was consolidated and written in the Constitution (supposedly a concession to the Maronites who got to formally keep the President's post) while at the same time transferring most of the powers of President to the Prime Minister (supposedly a concession to the Sunnis, since the Prime Minister now had a greater say in running the government).

The result of the Taif fiasco was that the country was now run by a three-headed monster since the three top posts had the same, and often conflicting, powers which inevitably leads to a paralysis of government, especially when goodwill is absolutely lacking. As a result, the only "achievement" of Rafik Hariri who became Prime Minister soon after the Taif modality went into effect under the Syrian occupation was to rebuild downtown Beirut - partly with his own money and partly with money he pilfered from the rightful owners of the stores, buildings and markets that existed before the war. Other than that, the country has remained a pathetic caricature of a nation, unable to govern itself, always on the verge of economic and political collapse, begging the world every 3 years for aid, raped right and left by Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Israel, and plagued by corrupt political leaders whose sole objective is to represent their own communities, not the country as a whole. Contrast Lebanon's abysmal history since the 1989 Taif Agreement to its shining history between 1943 and 1975 as a prosperous democracy under the previous 1943 constitution, and you will see that this week's presidential election failure is one perfect example of why the Taif Agreement really took Lebanon backwards rather than forward. It is not enough to have a chair in the musical chair game; one also has to play by the rules, and Lebanon's political-feudal-religious leaderships do not play by any rule.

The events of this week, in which a new President was not elected to replace the departing Lahoud, leave Lebanon now with a Sunni Prime Minister at the helm, and without there being a Maronite in the presidential post. With the Taif Agreement being Installment No. 1, the present situation (which some analysts believe may last for a long while, like the Hamas anomaly in Palestine) constitutes Installment No. 2 in the drive to give the Sunnis the ascendancy in Lebanon. Installment No. 3 is itself not far off the horizon, since the Sunnis' third position demographically behind the Maronites and the Shiites is now a hurdle which must be addressed.

The solution to the Sunnis' demographic weak position will be worked out with the kick-off of the Annapolis Arab-Israeli peace conference. Remember that the July 2000 Camp David negotiations (Barak, Arafat and Clinton) stumbled on the last two remaining "final status" obstacles: Jerusalem and the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees. Some time this past summer, the Israeli government and the Abbas Palestinian government appeared to agree that East Jerusalem (Abu Dis) could become the capital of the future Palestinian State, meaning Israel is now willing to concede on Jerusalem, with naturally the expected but yet unsaid Palestinian concession on the Right of Return.

If it appears therefore that the fate of the Palestinian refugees will soon be decided in Annapolis by denying them the Right of Return, this makes their permanent settlement in their current host countries an inevitable outcome. In Lebanon, there are 500,000 Palestinian refugees, 95% of whom Sunnis. Once they are settled in Lebanon as full-fledged Lebanese citizens, the Lebanese Sunnis suddenly see their numbers swell to the highest demographic advantage, which becomes the bridge to a future Installment No. 4 in which the Sunnis will seek to amend the Lebanese Constitution and claim the Presidency as theirs.

I am a fierce advocate of abandoning the archaic sectarian basis of Lebanon's political system and moving the country into secularism. But Lebanon is a country of dinosaurs, and the Church and the Mosque have unimaginable power in terms of money and land, but more importantly in the sway they hold over the minds of the Lebanese people who have not yet learned that their salvation is in their rejection of religion and tribes as the basis of their political system. In order to survive, Lebanese democracy must take the next step of moving from an archaic federation of religious communities who are not even semi-autonomous in a highly centralized State, to a form of government in which the people have a direct relation with their State and without the intercession of Patriarchs, Mullas, Muftis and other unelected people with strange headgear who are no more than dinosaurs from the Middle Ages.