Lebanon’s latest PM-designate Najib Miqati has now named his government. The new government’s main role will be to steer the country through its much-needed parliamentary elections, which should take place before the term of the current parliament ends May 31.
Miqati, who is apparently a mild-mannered guy with links to most parts of Lebanon’s political spectrum, has named a much smaller government than usual– only 14 members instead of the usual 30 or so. (The 30 figure had become traditional as a way of getting all the extremely intricate balancing of this tiny Armenian church sect versus that Greek Orthodox church sect versus that Druze sect, etc, etc, exactly “right”… It had nothing at all to do with actually delivering a decent level of government service to citizens on an accountable basis– much more to do with divvying up the national patronage cake among its greedy claimants.)
Organizing the elections–which still also requires passage by the existing parliament of a new election law, which has to happen each time in Lebanon!– will be in the hands of new Interior Minister Hassan Sabei, a retired General Security officer who’s considered close to the Hariri family.
My dear old friend Ghassan Salameh, who had previously served in a Hariri-led government as Culture Minister, comes back as Minister for Higher Education and Culture, both.
Ghassan served as political advisor to Lakhdar Ibrahimi when Lakhdar was the UN’s representative in Iraq in mid and late 2003. In November 2003, Ghassan delivered this interesting presentation on the Iraq situation to a gathering in London. In it, he urged the international community to transform the US military presence in Iraq into a truly multinational force operating under a UN mandate. He urged the occupying power to go slow on privatization of the Iraqi economy, and to work hard on trying to engage all of Iraq’s neighbors cooperatively in the project of reconstruction…
But I guess for the next few weeks, at least, Ghassan will be busy primarily on Lebanese political issues.
I strongly hope that Miqati and his team, and the whole of the present Lebanese parliament can succeed in having an election that is free and fair, and effectively insulated from all outside influence; that its results are accepted as legitimate by the vast majority of Lebanese; and that it generates a parliament and a new government who see their first duty as being to serve Lebanon’s citizenry rather than line their own (or anyone else’s) pockets.
If this latter outcome is won, that would truly be a first for Lebanon.
(If you haven’t yet seen my big Boston Review article on Hizbullah and Lebanon, you can find some good background material there on the role Hizbullah has played in Lebanese electoral politics over the past 13 years.)