Rational Grounds

Electing Sleiman as president. Mission accomplished, and Lebanon has a president after six months of vacuum. However, he comes in as a severely weakened president. He will get to appoint three ministers in the new cabinet, though whether the ministries in question are high powered ones (like Defense or Finance) or less so (Social Affairs or Youth and Sports) is to be seen. There are rumours that the opposition and majority will divide the "sovereign" ministries - Defense, Finance, Justice, Interior, Foreign Affairs, and maybe Labor - equally between them, leaving none for the president.

But the real problem with a Sleiman presidency is his personality. Sleiman has made it clear over the yeares that he will shift with the strongest wind. This protects him, perhaps, but it makes him an undependable and weak ally, and certainly no true leader. His accession to the presidency allows the situation to finally move forward, but it doesn't solve the basic problem between the pro-West and pro-Syrian/Iranian factions.

The electoral law changes. The best hope for a strong Sleiman presidency, as I see it, is the dissolution of the March 14 coalition. The new electoral law allows for much more accurate representation than the 2000/2005 law. But the changes are, virtually across the board, bad for March 14.

Christian neighborhoods are no longer tied to Sunni dominated west Beirut anymore, meaning that Hariri has lost his absolute control of the cities parliamentary seats. He'll still be able to bring in 10 from west Beirut, but the nine seats in east Beirut now depend solely on the electoral fortunes of the various Christian parties. Similarly in the North, the districts are no longer tied to each other and pro-Syrian, anti-Hariri politicians like Sleiman Franjieh now have the opportunity to win their way back into parliament at March 14's expense. Jezzine, a Christian district in South Lebanon, is no longer tied to Hezbollah's electoral fortunes either, but the Christians of South Lebanon have never been friendly to the Sunni-led March 14 coalition anyway.

Until now the Northern and Beirut Christian MPs have been divided between March 14 and those clinging to Michel Aoun, who has allied with Hezbollah. But now that Aoun has lost the presidency and March 14 Christians aren't required to caucus with Hariri to get elected, we may see them drift together in a new alliance or constellation of alliances.

What's more, the Armenians are now big time power brokers in Beirut. Historically the Armenians have always followed the president, wedding the fortunes of their minority community to a major national political figure. Heavyweight Michel al-Murr generally follows the same pattern; his district is the Metn, which also contains the main Armenian stronghold of Bourj Hammoud. The president will also likely see support from his home base in the army officer ranks, where he has previously competed for support with Aoun. With Aoun now more marginalized, we may see a swing from his party to Sleiman.

So new independence for the major Christian factions, and a gathering of support behind Sleiman. That reservoir of power is his for the taking, I think, but to do so he has to lead rather than follow, something he has been loath to do up to this point. This would break or at least severely strain the March 14 coalition, as Christians largely return to sect, politically.

Better representation aside, I'm not sure that having all the major sects united (and still heavily armed) and pulling in differing directions is that good for the country. We'll see.

The national unity government. The opposition got its demand for a veto-wielding third of 11 seats in the cabinet, meaning it can veto any cabinet decision it disagrees with. This assumes that the present political alliances remain as they are, of course, which, see above, is highly questionable. But they've got it for now, and that's a major concession from March 14, possibly the biggest thing they didn't want to give in on.

Of course, this really only recognizes de jure what Hezbollah has de facto - with their arms, they were already able to veto government decisions by launching an invasion and occupation of Beirut.

There is rampant speculation on who will get nominated for what ministries, but as far as I can tell nobody has any firm idea. These things are likely still being negotiated, and the truth won't even take shape until later this week at least.

Hezbollah's arms. There was a call to refrain from the use of arms in the Doha agreement, Sleiman in his swearing in rejected the use of arms internally, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said that his party's arms are for fighting Israel and would not be used to achieve internal political gains.

All of this is meaningless, of course. For one, the mere fact that Hezbollah holds the arms affects internal politics. Two, all of these things have been said before and it didn't stop them from carrying on their mini civil war two weeks ago. All they have to do is accuse their internal enemies of being a fifth columnn of Zionist conspirators and voila - the use of their arms is legitimized.

Hezbollah will keep its arms until it controls the state and decides to fold the Lebanese army into itself, or until it is defeated in a new civil war. Should Syria and Israel actually make peace, it would be cornered enough that it could conceivably give up its arms grudgingly without a fight, but I highly doubt it. If anything, that scenario would precipitate a war for Hezbollah's survival. A real and lasting peace between Syria and Israel would be a mortal blow to the armed resistance as it is now, but the death throes would be probably be long and bloody.

All in all, Doha has given the Hezbollah-led opposition a major leg up. This will all be rearranged again in 2009 after the parliamentary elections, but not necessarily to March 14's benefit, assuming the alliance still exists at that point. And given last night's clashes after Nasrallah's speech (I'm trying to find the full text in Arabic now, and I'll have an analysis and response soon after), it's obvious that the underlying problems have not really been addressed. This moment of optimism isn't likely to last very long.