THE BATTLE OF THE TWO MICHELS HAS BEGUN
By Michael Young
The Daily Star
Aug 21 2008
Lebanon
Weeks ago, Michel Aoun’s political adversaries were already predicting
that the general’s first act once the government was formed would
be to demand that the prerogatives of the deputy prime minister
be clarified. The post is traditionally "reserved" for the Greek
Orthodox community and is currently held by Aoun’s comrade Issam Abu
Jamra. They sensed that Aoun would use the dispute to yet again try
to rally support among Christians by claiming to be defending their
interests against Sunni dominance – since the deputy prime minister’s
job description must necessarily be elucidated at the expense of the
Sunni prime minister.
On Tuesday, this discussion took on more rarefied airs when the
minister Tammam Salam and the parliamentarian Ghassan Mukheiber of
the Aoun bloc exchanged statements on the role of Mukheiber’s uncle,
Albert, when he was deputy prime minister in the 1972 government headed
by Tammam Salam’s father, Saeb. Mukheiber argued that his uncle had
stood in for Salam when the prime minister was abroad, while Salam
insisted this was not true. Mukheiber went on to state that now was
a good time to define the duties of the deputy prime minister, which
must have pleased Aoun while also allowing Mukheiber to score some
points within his own Greek Orthodox community.
In the midst of a hot summer, this somehow qualifies as news. Aoun
has long been a master of institutional guerilla warfare, in which he
scores points by consistently applying sectarian pin pricks. However,
something may be changing. The small-mindedness of the deputy prime
minister debate may actually play to Aoun’s disfavor because it comes
as the president, Michel Sleiman, is seen by many to be filling
his political space with more momentous achievements – not least
his visit to Damascus last week. In the competition over Christian
representation, Aoun’s weapons are now looking less effective than
Sleiman’s.
A lot of this is based on perceptions, of course. Sleiman came back
triumphant from Syria, but the results of his summit with President
Bashar Assad were, to be kind, very limited. On the fate of prisoners
in Syria the Lebanese got a committee with no deadlines set for
its work. On border demarcation Lebanon got another committee,
again with no deadlines set, with many people apparently unaware
that the demarcation question has been drifting from one committee
to the next for decades. On the Shebaa Farms the Lebanese adopted
the Syrian position that there could be no delineation of borders
before Israel’s occupation ended, thereby leaving the geographical
identity of the territory in limbo. And before traveling to Damascus,
Sleiman, through a spokesman, declared that the Syrian-Lebanese Higher
Council, the starkest memento of the years of Syrian hegemony, would
not be dismantled.
What did Lebanon get in exchange? The promise of an embassy and
diplomatic recognition. That’s not negligible, but we might want to
look at this from Syria’s perspective. A Syrian embassy in Beirut would
not be like the Kuwaiti or even the Egyptian embassy. It would be an
axis point for Syria’s allies in the country, a very useful means of
allowing the Assad regime to exert its political influence in Beirut
on a day-to-day basis in a way it cannot do so today. Many remember
the considerable sway that the United Arab Republic’s ambassador
in Beirut, Abdel-Hamid Ghaleb, had at the start of President Fouad
Shihab’s mandate. Diplomatic recognition on its own does not guarantee
respect for Lebanese sovereignty.
Despite all this, Sleiman benefited domestically from his summit
with Assad, and came back to take in hand the volatile situation
in Tripoli. The public could not but approve, whatever the results,
and Aoun is beginning to realize that he is losing ground among his
coreligionists. Nor can the general gain much anymore by persistently
baiting Fouad Siniora, when the prime minister seems to be working so
well with president. This was evident in the preparation for Siniora’s
trips to Egypt and Iraq, both partly designed to help overcome the
electricity crisis. Aoun’s frustration was understandable. Siniora,
with Sleiman’s tacit approval, circumvented the energy minister, Alain
Tabourian, whose Tashnag Party is allied with the Aounist bloc. The
president and prime minister, each for reasons of his own, are happy
to collude against Aoun. Better still, they are playing on the recent
tension between the general and Tashnag over the fact that Aoun gave
them the Energy Ministry in his quota of ministerial portfolios, when
they had asked for the social affairs portfolio that Aoun instead
reserved for Mario Aoun, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement.
It may be a reach to suggest that Sleiman is making a bid for the
Armenians at this early stage, by showing them that they have more to
gain by allying themselves with him than with Aoun. But ultimately
that may be precisely what the president does as Michel Murr begins
preparing a candidate list in the Metn, one facet of a broader
strategy by Sleiman to nibble away at Aoun’s base before parliamentary
elections next year. It is known that the president wants a bloc of
his own in Parliament, and he may be able to count on assistance from
Aoun’s rivals in this regard. That explains why Aoun has so fervently
defended Hizbullah lately. He needs Shiite help to win compensatory
seats in the Baabda constituency, in Jezzine, and in Zahleh. Some are
suggesting Aoun also has an eye on the Maronite seat in Baalbek-Hermel.
The elections are still a long way off, but Aoun is already entering
the period he dreaded after he was forced in Doha to accept Sleiman’s
election. For better or worse the president is now the person most
Maronites and Christians in general are looking toward to defend
their communal wellbeing. This is forcing Aoun to behave recklessly,
as when he tied Hizbullah’s disarmament to the return of Palestinian
refugees to their homes, a position that made many in his electorate
gag. Aoun also erred in appointing his son-in-law to head the cash
cow Ministry of Telecommunications, contradicting his earlier claims
to be a different type of politician who opposed nepotism in politics.
Aoun is a cat of many political lives, so it may be unwise to write him
off just yet. But even cats need branches to sit on, and the general
is finding that these are not as numerous as they once were. He is
picking secondary fights and is now beginning to sound like a lost
voice in the desert.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
