Outside The Box

You would think that, five days from the Parliamentary session which will supposedly elect Lebanon's next President, Beirut would be abuzz with news. You would be wrong. There is not so much breaking news as one static reality: the opposing forces are happy to draw the process out, waiting for the other side to blink. There is no surer sign of this than Walid Jumblatt's current presence in Washington D.C. If there was any chance that a deal was going to be cut in the next few days, you can bet that he would be in Beirut.

A few pundits and political has-beens have tried to fill the dead air with solutions that are a little, uh, unconventional. While I am all for thinking outside of the box, some of these ideas remind us why we have a "box" in the first place. Take Salim Hoss's recent suggestion that the political leaders set up an unofficial ballot box, where the MPs would vote for one of four "neutral" candidates. With everyone on the same page, they could then proceed to Parliament and elect the candidate with the most votes. There are enough objections to this scheme to make one wonder whether Hoss understands the concept of democracy. Most perniciously, March 14 has come too far and sacrificed too much to accept a "neutral" President, whatever that means.

More intellectually stimulating is Nibras Kazimi's recommendation that Lebanon just scrap this whole Presidential election entirely. It's more trouble than it's worth, you see. Any President is going to disrupt the balance between March 14 and March 8, he says, and result in blood in the streets. Much better to maintain the standard dysfunction, letting Presidential perogatives devolve to PM Siniora. Parliament can draw up a new electoral law, and everyone else can hold their breath for the next election cycle. The problem is that Kazimi seems to be unaware that President Lahoud has stated that he will tear up Taif and refuse to pass power to the Siniora government in the event of a Presidential vacuum. Tranferring Presidential perogatives to the Siniora government, which the opposition has spent the past year trying to topple, holds a greater risk of violence than electing a strong March 14 President.