Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati was expected to make a major address today concerning the stalemate over the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was threatening to bring down his government.

Mikati did speak to the media, but it was only to say that he had transferred Lebanon’s share of the funding (around $33 million) earlier this morning. The STL confirmed receipt of the funds, so it seems that Lebanon has dodged another bullet.

As of this moment, here’s what we don’t know:

1. We don’t know what kind of deal Mr. Mikati cut with his cabinet partners in order to prevent their resignation;
2. We don’t know if funding the STL in exchange for valuable concessions was the hidden agenda of the Aounist bloc and Hizbullah all along, or if they decided on this path as a result of more recent developments (like Jumblatt’s defection, the situation in Syria, etc.);
3. We don’t know if a vote will be required in the cabinet or in parliament to “approve” the funding. Apparently, Mikati transferred the money from the premiership’s own budget, so maybe there will be no need for a vote. This strikes me as a very dicey precedent.

A few minutes of Internet research turned up the 2011-2012 budget for the Prime Minister’s office, which is around a billion US dollars per year (click here to see the spreadsheet, to which I’ve added an extra column converting the figures from [thousands of] liras to dollars).

I have no idea how accurate these figures are, or which pot Mr. Mikati pulled the STL funding from. There are line items in there that are extremely vague (see for example #32, which is devoted to “foreign funding” to the tune of one third of a billion dollars). One would have to assume that there are more detailed figures elsewhere.

At any rate, I’m no expert on government budgets, but it seems odd to me that a Prime Minister of a country like Lebanon should have discretionary spending powers on over one billion dollars. The President’s budget, by contrast, is around $11 million, and the budget for the entire Parliament is $45 million. If anyone has more information on this issue, please feel free to leave it in the comment section. In the meantime, I will try to get an answer from Mr. Mikati’s advisors about where the money for the STL is coming from.

Today has been a very silly day in Lebanese politics. A cabinet session scheduled to address various issues unrelated to the funding of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) had to be canceled because ministers belonging to General  Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement decided not to turn up.

The reason? According to various sources, it was to send a signal that the FPM is prepared to resign and “turn the tables on the opposition”, with respect to the STL funding issue, which must be brought to a vote at next Wednesday’s cabinet meeting. Minister of Energy Gebran Bassil told the AFP that the signal had to do with the FPM’s unhappiness with the government’s performance, not necessarily on the issue of the STL.

Come again?

Let’s remind ourselves that the FPM is the majority partner in the Mikati government. In other words, they are the government. There is no meaningful opposition to their policies. So how can they be disappointed in the government’s performance?

Even by the cynical standards we’ve grown accustomed to, this latest move by the FPM takes the cake. Between 2005 and 2009, they complained because they weren’t given the Presidency. Between 2009 and 2011, they complained because they didn’t have enough seats in government. And now that they are the single largest bloc in the cabinet, they are threatening to bring down their own government because of its poor performance?

In an Arab world where tyrants are struggling to hold on to their seats, Lebanon’s leaders are trying to find ways to get out of theirs as quickly as possible.

No one is fooled that this move doesn’t have everything to do with Najib Mikati’s own vow to resign if the STL’s funding is not approved at next week’s meeting. But the FPM’s counter-threat to resign first is an escalation typical of the blustering and irrational theatrics of Michel Aoun. “You think you can scare us with your resignation, Najib? Well then, we’ll resign first! Ha!“

Amateur psychological analysis aside, what does this puzzling strategy tell us about what the STL funding issue means to the March 8 coalition? Obviously, there’s no way that Hizbullah can support the STL since they are being targeted by it. Nor can one expect AMAL to break with Hizbullah on any issue. But the FPM surely could have elected to play some kind of conciliatory or mediating role rather than walking such a hard line. Why be more Catholic than the Pope?

My own conversations with a few FPM insiders over the past couple days suggest that there is considerable befuddlement and frustration with the position that the party finds itself in.

And let’s not forget that resigning and bringing down the current government would only make matters worse — for Aoun, for Hizbullah, and ultimately for Syria. By pushing the magic button and sending Lebanon into its familiar tailspin, Aoun can dodge the STL funding bullet. But this measure will certainly not bring the STL’s activities to a halt. All it will do is create chaos in the near term and possible sanctions in the long term.

Maybe Aoun and Hizbullah would prefer that kind of combative atmosphere to the current situation, where they look worse and worse each day as the Arabs, the Turks, the Europeans, and the Americans keep heaping more pressure on Damascus. Or maybe Aoun is just bluffing. We’ll know sooner rather than later.

At the end of the day, March 8 needs to wake up and face the fact that they’re not going to get away from the Tribunal issue by changing prime ministers every few months.

Ever since Najib Mikati took over as Prime Minister of Lebanon earlier this year, things have gone relatively smoothly. With no opposition in the cabinet, there have been few opportunities for conflict (with the exception of the odd squabble between Michel Aoun and his disgruntled allies).

All that could change next week. The cabinet must finally take up the ticking time bomb that they’ve been avoiding for months (and which was the downfall of Saad Hariri’s government), namely the issue of funding the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

For obvious reasons, Hizbullah is opposed to funding the court, as is AMAL. And Michel Aoun, per his usual custom, has played the role of the intransigent rejectionist to the hilt, going so far as to declare: “Even if Hizbullah approves the funding, we’ll vote against it.”

The problem is that it’s not in Hizbullah’s interests, at this stage, to create an international incident over the STL, and this is what may well happen if Lebanon reneges on its obligation to the court. The Americans and Europeans have made it abundantly clear over the past several weeks that there would be dire consequences if Lebanon severs its ties to the STL.

What this means is still  unclear. However, when one combines Lebanon’s recent stance at the Arab League on the Syrian uprising with the prospect of ending its cooperation with the Tribunal, it seems straightforward to assume that Hizbullah’s opponents (in Lebanon and abroad) will seize the opportunity to argue that the Mikati government is nothing more than an extension of the Syrian regime, and should be treated as such by the international community.

Hizbullah would prefer to avoid such a scenario, as they understand that their position on Syria has not done them many favors in Lebanon or the rest of the region. The problem is, even if they wanted to find a solution that would keep the hounds at bay while allowing them to save face by voting against the funding, it’s not clear how they would do so.

As far as I have been able to ascertain from my conversations in Beirut this week, approving the funding requires a simple majority vote in the thirty-member cabinet. At present, Hizbullah and its allies hold eighteen seats, while the remaining twelve are divided between ministers loyal to Mikati, President Sleiman, and Walid Jumblatt. In other words, there is no way to compose the necessary majority to approve the funding without using ministers from the shares of Hizbullah, Amal, or the FPM.

So we’re faced with a situation whereby either one of those three parties has to reverse its policy on the funding, or they all hold a firm line and Lebanon drops the STL like a bad habit. Neither scenario is  ideal, from the current majority’s perspective.

One possible solution that has been floated is that the cabinet passes the hot potato to the Parliament, where  a majority in favor of the funding can be assembled by having Walid Jumblatt vote with his old allies. I’m not sure this is a constitutionally legitimate move, but I’ve been told that it could be the basis for a typically Lebanese fudge.

Whatever happens, we’re sure to see Saad Hariri make a serious push next week at the Tripoli gathering to put as much pressure as possible on Najib Mikati to resign. My sense is that Hizbullah would prefer to keep this government afloat and out of the Syrian cross-fire, but not at the expense of voting for the tribunal themselves. If the parliamentary solution doesn’t work and the cabinet can’t muster the votes, Mikati will probably walk and Hizbullah will let him do so.

In that scenario, we’ll be back to treading water with no government, and things will be… interesting, yet again.

[An earlier version of this post stated that a two-thirds super-majority was required to approve the funding. I'm now being told that a simple majority will do, as there are no new international treaties being signed.]

Greetings to all from Beirut, where I’ve been meeting with MPs, civil society folks, and good friends about the Lebanese senate project I’m working on. Will have more to say on this score when I’m back in Cambridge, but for now, I thought I’d direct you to a  new International Herald Tribune / NY Times Global opinion blog called Latitude, which has just launched. I have a piece there today on the STL and its discontents.

I’m off to Beirut this weekend to do some work on a research project I’ve been developing at Stanford’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. The project deals with the challenge of establishing an upper legislative chamber in Lebanon, which is called for by the Ta’if Accord. I’ve written on this subject in the past, and we’ve held some good debates about it here at QifaNabki. The results of the project will be made available at some point in the spring, at which point I’ll look forward to getting some feedback from the readership.

I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for blogging while I’m on the go, but I’ll weigh in if anything interesting happens. (Rumor has it that a Mikati resignation is a distinct possibility in the near term, particularly if Hizbullah decides to play hardball on STL funding or the situation in Syria gets much worse.) Stay tuned…

As regular readers will attest, I’m something of a Lebanese political talk show junkie. Shows like Kalam al-Nas, Bi-Mawdu`iyyeh, al-Fasad, and others, in my view, do a much better job of derailing politicians off their talking points than most of their counterparts in the West.

In a country where the print media is largely ignored and has a marginal influence on  politics, getting your message across on these weekly TV programs is a vital piece of every political party’s strategy. As a result, what one usually gets  is a very lively debate between two politicians from rival parties.

Occasionally, it gets ugly. The clips below are some of my favorite rumbles from the past few years, in no particular order.

1. Mustapha Alloush and Fa’iz Shukur (Bi-Mawdu`iyyeh, November 14, 2011): This clip from today’s show reveals the head of Lebanon’s Baath Party getting physical with Mustapha Alloush, a prominent member of Saad al-Hariri’s Future Movement. (What is it with the tempers on these Baath officials? This clip brings to mind the harassment of a pharmacist by Mustapha al-Qawwas, the head of the Baath party in Saida, which was caught on tape a few months ago…)

2. `Uqab Saqr and Hassan Ya`qub (Kalam al-Nas, May 19, 2009): There’s plenty of shouting earlier in this segment, but the key bit is when Saqr calmly corrects Ya`qub’s own erroneous correction of Nicholas Fattoush’s quotation of a Qur’anic verse. Wonky? Sure. But it riled Ya`qub up enough that he (allegedly) threatened to kill Saqr after the show.

3. Ibrahim Kan`aan and Mosbah al-Ahdab (Kalam al-Nas, December 2006): This is a great showdown between two of the most vocal spokesmen of the FPM and March 14, respectively. It takes place not long after Hizbullah walked out of the Saniora cabinet in 2006. Tensions were running very high in the country, and it shows here. Marcel Ghanem has to end the show early to prevent fists from flying.

4. Rafiq Nasrallah vs. Carlos Edde (Kalam al-Nas, May 17, 2008): I don’t know whose bright idea it was to send Carlos Edde against Rafiq Nasrallah just ten days after the events of May 7 2008. Edde grew up abroad and pokes fun at his own linguistic inabilities while Nasrallah is a rhetorical master… No real sparring here but a smack down nonetheless. This is the kind of performance that gets the pro-resistance advocates’ hearts pumping.

5. `Uqab Saqr vs. Omar Bakri (Kalam al-Nas, May 5 2011): I could do a Top Ten of clips devoted only to Saqr — his mastery of this form at such a young age is truly bewildering — but this one is among the recent best. He debates the famous Islamist Omar Bakri shortly after Osama Bin Laden’s death, on the question of whether or not Bin Laden should be regarded as a Muslim hero.

Readers are encouraged to contribute links to their favorite smack downs in the comment section.

Now that the mystery of Moussa al-Sadr’s disappearance has been solved, Lebanon needs a new vanished imam to contemplate.

Why not Saad al-Hariri? Even by his own peripatetic standards, al-Hariri’s absence from the political scene over the past several months has been something to behold. The man has well and truly left the building, and the situation is so bad that even NOW Lebanon has noticed. Michael Young recently had this to say about Hariri’s Houdini act:

Hariri has been abroad for months, an affront to those who elected him. His money problems are genuine and have not yet been resolved, taking a toll on his patronage network and political authority. The former prime minister is not out yet, however if his occultation lasts much longer, his leadership will melt. Many sympathizers wonder what Hariri actually stands for. Who did they mobilize to elect in the 2009 elections? No answer has come from the Future Movement, which has morphed into something of an annoying jack-in-the-box—popping its head up episodically to deliver some statement or barb against Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

In my view, Saad is trying to pull a page from from his father’s playbook. In 1998, after Emile Lahoud was installed as Syria’s man in Baabda, Rafiq al-Hariri resigned. He told a reporter from al-Hayat the reasons behind his calculations in a revealing interview.

Hariri excused himself from forming the first government in the Lahoud era, after a dispute about the delegation of MPs’ votes, which left Lahoud with the freedom to name the prime minister-designate. In fact, some of his friends advised him to leave office, and one of them was then-Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam. Khaddam told him that Lahoud was beginning his mandate in a Buick that was fresh from the dealer, while “you’re driving an Opel that has been ground down by exercising power.” Khaddam suggested that Hariri let Lahoud use up some of the power of his car, and then they would see. This is what happened when Hariri returned to power in 2000 after a clear election victory, a victory that did not anger some Syrian parties that had not been enthusiastic about Lahoud in the first place.

Saad probably hopes that by the time the 2013 elections roll around, the Lebanese will have had enough of Najib Miqati and his Buick — to say nothing of Michel Aoun’s Batmobile and Nasrallah’s STL getaway car — and will welcome Hariri back to town with open arms. It is, in other words, a policy of “offshore balancing,” whereby a once-dominant power sits back and lets its enemies destroy each other before swooping in to tilt the balance in its own favor. (In this case, Hariri is the one who is perpetually offshore, trying to manage the affairs back home…)

My sense is that this gambit will fail. Miqati’s government — just by dint of being in the right place at the right time — will be able to take credit for solving the electricity problem, giving Lebanon high-speed internet, maintaining relative peace and stability while not compromising on the STL issue or crossing any Syrian red lines, and perhaps even introducing proportional representation. Furthermore, depending on how things play out in Syria, the Saudis may  find it more  advantageous to try to  co-opt Lebanon’s new quadripartite alliance (Hizbullah, Aoun, Jumblatt, and Miqati) rather than supporting an electoral “war of elimination” against March 8th in 2013.

Whatever the case may be, the near future doesn’t look so great for al-Mustaqbal.