Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Whatever else the Lebanese parliamentary election has done, it has certainly reshuffled the cards when it comes to Lebanon’s presidential candidates. In fact, all the leading candidates face major obstacles to being elected, while the identity of a potential compromise figure seems elusive at best.
Mr. Bassil’s problem is that he stands for nothing. His desire to become president, and do whatever it takes to achieve this, has turned the FPM into an extension of his ambition.
Hollowed out by corruption and mismanagement and buffeted by adverse economic conditions, authoritarian governments in the Middle East are struggling to deliver the socioeconomic benefits that once pacified their publics.
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun’s efforts to salvage what remains of his calamitous mandate are having less and less of an impact on the political situation in Lebanon.
If Hezbollah’s critics should do anything, it is to collectively support Mr Aoun’s calls for a dialogue over a national defence strategy, and insist it begin as soon as possible. Hezbollah made it clear after the president’s speech that now was not the time to discuss this.
For weeks now, Lebanon’s cabinet has failed to meet, showing once again how politics remains far more important to the country’s leaders than urgent economic revitalization.
Beyond the Star, however, what we are witnessing today is the demise of Lebanon as a media centre for the Middle East. This venerable legacy was unsustainable for a variety of reasons, not least the fact that newspapers no longer command the audiences they once did.
One thing looms over the spring parliamentary elections above all: the presidential election next fall. If there is one reason why a majority of blocs do not want a diaspora vote, it is to deny Mr Bassil an opportunity to say that he retains popularity among Christians, and therefore is entitled to succeed Mr Aoun, his father-in-law, as president.
On days when I despair at the state of Lebanon, or the future of Hong Kong, I think of the Berlin Wall. For 40 years, those living in its shadow, on either side, could not imagine a life beyond the division it enforced, even while many strove to bring it down. Until, one day, the wall fell.
Never has this felt truer than now, when Beirut, like much of the world, feels unmoored and broken, on hold but also changing rapidly, squeezed between the coronavirus, populism, and economic unraveling.