While the political crisis in Lebanon intensifies, the government formation battle between Hariri and Aoun will continue until further notice

While the political crisis continues in the country, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri opened fire on Lebanese President Michel Aoun, in a speech he gave on the 16th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, on February 14, 2005.

The memory of the assassination, which constituted a fateful turning point in the country's history, comes for the first time after the International Court in The Hague on August 18, 2020, the Lebanese Salim Ayyash, a member of the Hezbollah group, condemned the assassination of Hariri, which prompted his son Saad to say, "This ruling will be implemented, and Ayyash He will be handed over no matter how long it takes, "he also warned against the resumption of the series of assassinations, and linking it to the recent assassination that extended to the researcher, publisher and anti-Hezbollah activist Luqman Salim on the fourth of this month.

Political freedom

In his speech, Hariri defended what was described as "political freedom" that his father had established after his arrival to the premiership (1992), and reminded those who attacked it (ie Aoun's team) that it "stopped the civil war and brought Lebanon back to the world map." And he continued, "What are your achievements? Did you do for the country and for the people? "

From this perspective, Hariri pointed directly at President Aoun by revealing the course of the stalled negotiations that took place between them during 16 meetings, the last of which was Friday, after nearly 4 months had passed since Hariri was appointed to form the government on October 22, 2020.

The complex of forming the government centered on the following points: the blocking third, the number of ministers, the designation of Christian ministers, and the mechanism for distributing ministerial portfolios.

This speech came for the first time after the video leaked from the presidential palace, which revealed Aoun's accusation to Hariri of "lying" during his conversation with the caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab. An indirect response from Hariri came by saying, "The amount of lies and myths that were released is unbearable."

Hariri explained that his government formation, which is based on the French initiative, is made up of 18 ministers from non-partisan specialists, and took into account the names mentioned in the list that Aoun presented to him in its second list after the assignment, so he wanted to refute Aoun’s previous denial of submitting any paper that included a government formation.

The President-designate elaborated on his speech about his fundamental problem with President Aoun, rejecting the accusation of assaulting the rights of Christians, and linked the stalled formation of the government to Aoun's insistence on obtaining the blocking third (i.e. obtaining 7 ministers instead of 6 according to Hariri's proposal).

Among the questions he posed, "Why does he want the obstructive third? What is he afraid of? Unless there is behind the curtain someone who moves and encourages, so he tells us clearly."

Observers saw that Hariri’s speech confirmed the “crisis of confidence” rooted between him and the president of the country, which automatically leads to the crisis of the Lebanese system in light of the exchange of accusations and the dispute over the constitutional powers, as if each party is reading the constitution from its political perspective, eliminating any hope for a near breakthrough.

Forensic audit

The presidential palace statement quickly responded to Hariri, noting that he "dealt with the circumstances of the formation of the government and included many inaccuracies," considering that the latter "is trying, through the formation of the government, to impose new norms outside the principles, the constitution and the charter."

Hariri's speech resulted in a wave of political and popular responses from President Aoun's team, which was called "criminal scrutiny," and they launched the hashtag # Hariri_to_vision, so the deputy of the Parliamentary Free Patriotic Movement (headed by Gebran Bassil) Salim Aoun said, "Only the criminal audit reveals the facts. , And separates between right and wrong, and separates between the cause of the crisis and those qualified to solve it, "adding," to the criminal scrutiny, a role without sharing and elusiveness. "

Here, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement's political council, Walid al-Ashqar, considers that “the political freedom established by Hariri’s father is the one who bears responsibility for what the country has reached,” and that “Saad Hariri brought about the basic problem by distracting him from what happened between him and President Aoun, while evading The formation of a government to prevent the imposition of criminal scrutiny on its table.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Ashqar indicated that Hariri is unable to bid for the rights of Christians or any other disgusted sect, stressing that Aoun plays his role in preserving the constitution, "while Hariri wants to confiscate all his powers, by not giving Christians their rights in any government structure he offers. on him".

Al-Ashqar said that Hariri received lists of the names of Druze ministers (from the Progressive Socialist Party) and Shiites (from the Shiite duo: Hezbollah and the Amal Movement).

On the other hand, he dwarfed the role of the President of the Republic only by not participating in naming the names of Christian ministers.

He recalled that Hariri had previously given Aoun the blocking third in the government he formed after his election in 2016, and "Aoun did not use it in the wrong way at the time."

"Account statement"

However, journalist and political analyst Muhammad Nimer described Hariri’s speech to Al-Jazeera Net as a “statement of account” to open up to the Lebanese about the truth of his consultations with President Aoun, “which violates the constitution just to impose his government formation on the designated president.”

Nimr believes that Hariri is relying on French support and an Arab and Western incubator, unlike Aoun, who is internationally isolated after the US sanctions on Bassil, and accuses him of turning the presidency into a platform for his political team, considering that the response of the Presidency of the Republic came empty.

In the opinion of the political analyst, Hariri drew up a road map for forming a government backed by two factors: First, the necessity of reconciliation with the Gulf and international communities to restore the confidence of the outside, away from yielding to the Iranian axis.

And second, for the government team to have the ability to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund as a condition for Lebanon's access to foreign aid.

Al-Nimr considers that Hariri’s speech was articulated by his assertion that the time for concessions has passed, and he excludes his apology later for forming the government, “because he re-established his conditions, considering that the government must be formed as one of the international conditions that Hariri carried from his foreign trips.”

Inconsistency

In the end, observers have found that the gap between Aoun and Hariri has become so large that it impedes the possibility of meeting again, in light of each party's adherence to its position and conditions, while others find it an extension of regional conflicts, especially the Iranian-American conflict.

Here, the academic and political analyst Ali Shukr believes that Hariri focused on marketing himself as a figure capable of communicating with the outside based on his recent tour between the Emirates, Egypt and France, especially since the Western and Arab community expressed its willingness to help Lebanon, provided that a government with transparency was formed and carried out the reforms required of it. .

Shukr said in a statement to Al-Jazeera Net that any external settlement will not be reflected in a solution on the Lebanese arena unless the political leaders work on internal consensus, "while they expressed a great failure to do so."

Shukr said that the Lebanese situation is intertwined at the internal and regional levels, considering that the outside is distracted from Lebanon with other priorities, while the internal forces that are good at the game of time are waiting for a new regional outcome, "which means that the state of sterile stalling continues, and promises the Lebanese more political and security crises. And economically. "