By twist of fate, the beginning of the second year of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman's term in office is coinciding with the holding of parliamentary elections on June 7th. In other words, the elections are taking place a year into the experiment led by the consensus president, whose presidency was endorsed by Lebanese political factions, after a conflict between the March 14th coalition and the opposition reached a military climax, when the city of Beirut and some of Mount Lebanon were attacked militarily by Hezbollah and its allies. At the time, the Doha Accord was a swap involving various issues, which can be summed up under the following formula: ending the vacuum in the presidency of the Republic, which the opposition controlled, in exchange for the opposition's gaining the veto (one-third plus one) power in the Cabinet. However, the problem during the first year of President Suleiman's term has lain in the degree, to which he could transform his filling of the presidential vacuum, in the physical sense, into filling the vacuum in the political sense. It also means the extent, to which he can benefit from the consensus reached around him thanks to the Doha Accord, both domestically and externally, by transforming his “filling the chair” into a political role that can help him manage the political balance of power, in a way that is not limited to holding office, convening sessions of National Dialogue (with no results), and chairing Cabinet meetings without being able to take the decisions needed to manage the affairs of state. This happened with several decisions; the struggle over them caused the postponement of action on them for months, and prevented taking many other new decisions. During the first year of Suleiman's mandate, he took part in an “exercise” for the political role that would allow him to return to the presidency, in overseeing the country's political balancing act and authoring settlements between the two sides to the conflict. This period of time has been sufficient for the Lebanese president to draw the necessary conclusions, from this exercise, as the conflict has blocked the machinery of the state and the drive to see it arise. This is because Suleiman's achievements up to this point have been made thanks to foreign support for his presidency, rather than an acknowledgment by political groups of his central political role. In reality, the “exercise” performed by Suleiman during this first year in office is the first of its kind for a Lebanese president since the Taif Agreement. The margin granted to his predecessors, late Elias Hrawi and Emile Lahoud, was dependent on the ability of Syria's direct management of the Lebanese political system to block any role that Damascus felt “went too far”. Even more, the three-year extension of Lahoud's term was similar to the vacuum that was created by the end of his mandate, when no presidential elections were held for more than seven months. How could things remain like this after the Syrian withdrawal? If there is a coincidence in the simultaneous one-year mark in Suleiman's presidency and the parliamentary elections, then it is no coincidence if the president said what he said the other day, on the one-year marking of his election, as the vote nears. Most likely, he was expressing what he learned from the “exercise” of his first year, when he announced that “what is required of a consensus is not managing (political) equilibrium but creating balanced solutions, ‘imposing' these balances and guaranteeing their appearance; ‘decisiveness' is and always will be in the interest of the nation…” We can easily assume that Suleiman wrote this phrase in his speech after the exercise of his first year let him sense, as he sought to treat some much-needed issues of state, the inability to impose things or settle matters, due to the weak existing formula between the majority and the opposition, and because of the veto power (or “guaranteeing third”) that the latter wields in the executive branch. This is why he hinted in the same speech that the next government should be able to “give guarantees as a whole entity, rather than being divided. A part cannot guarantee a whole; but the contrary of that is true.” Thus, it is no coincidence, probably, that Suleiman began his address by talking about the return “of the world's confidence in our nation, and dealings with it on a state-to-state basis.” Moreover, he ended it by talking about his hometown of Jbeil and the deprivation it has suffered. One can see in this turn of fortune a symbol of his longing for local support, beginning with his city, on a level that would match the international and Arab support for his presidency, in order for him to perform his presidential role even more comfortably. The establishment of an independent parliamentary bloc supporting the role of the Lebanese president, in the next five years of Suleiman's term, appears to be an urgent need, so that he can play the role that has been blocked by a number of factors, beginning with the extreme polarization in the country. If such a bloc comes into being after the elections, the new parties to the political struggle will have to “wage” a new exercise with the president, over the political weight that the presidency should enjoy in dealing with Lebanon's domestic and external crises.
