Caveman in Beirut - A Time for Skepticism
blissstreetjournal.blogspot.com
By Unfrozen Caveman Linguist
Q: So what happens now? Will the be an election, or is there another alternative? (hat tip ghyrtred for the alert question)
A: Funny you should ask. When the Prime Minister of Lebanon resigns, his government - which includes his gaggle of ministers, sort of like the President Bush's cabinet in the United States - effectively dissolves. The President (in this case Emile Lahoud) will call all of his deputies and arrange for meetings with each and every one, and each deputy will recommend a replacement. This takes quite a lot of time, and there is talk of scrapping this procedure altogether under these heightened circumstances. Anyway, after the deputies manage to agree on a replacement, then the President will actually make his appointment. Immediately afterward, the new Prime-Minister-appointee will nominate individual ministers to their posts (mostly friends of his or guys he owes favors to), and voila! There will be a new government in Lebanon. As you can see, it's a rather fluid arrangement with oodles of inherent weaknesses.
Of course, Syria has for decades been an integral part of this process. Usually their involvement becomes evident in the number of trips to Damascus made by new appointees. I am not aware of the particulars of any further involvement, of course, but rest assured that it exists. Anyway, under the current circumstances, one may easily argue that Syria has relinquished very little at all, since President Emile Lahoud is firmly in the Syrian camp and ultimately he is the one responsible for nominating the next Prime Minister.
In the meantime, there are reports of violence in Tripoli (Karami's primary base of support) and some other areas in northern Lebanon - the strong points of Syrian support. Many people in Tripoli are very upset that their man was forced to resign - they are walking around in hordes, burning tires, burning cars, and the footage on television (LBC right now) shows quite a chaotic scene. With all the pressure that has been on Syria in the past two weeks, it would make perfect sense that the Syrians may want to create a diversion, and it seems that they may have done just that. What has happened here in just two hours was (1) A second news story has been created, demanding local news time, thereby taking some of the cameras off the protests in the downtown area; and (2) Counterdemonstrations - the thing that the opposition feared most.
And if this were not enough - al-Nahar reports that the security convoy of U.S. envoy David Satterfield (former Ambassador to Lebanon) was forced to change the venue in which Satterfield was supposed to meet with Lebanon's top Sunni muslim cleric, Mohammad Rashid Kabbani, when up to 20 unidentified armed men wearing civilian clothes appeared in the area. Al-Jazeera went as far as saying that this was an assassination attempt, and mainstream media may be downplaying the significance of this event.
So, to answer the question posed above - look for Syria to sow chaos, then make the standard claim that only they can keep Lebanon peaceful by means of their unique brand of realpolitik blood-sport. In the meantime, they may attempt some sleight-of-hand in the Lebanese government by shifting some people around, but in the end they will come up with a mix of ministers that is still loyal to them. There are still plenty of reasons to be skeptical. This is not Kiev, Tbilisi, or Belgrade just yet. |
