There is a numerical majority inside the Lebanese parliament that chose Najib Mikati to form a government following the resignation of the previous Cabinet. The allocation of the shares and the agreement over the portfolios may be the factors contributing to the delay affecting the government formation for days, even weeks. This is natural and understandable in light of such a complex and entwined situation as the Lebanese one. However, the arrival of the formation process to some sort of deadlock, points to the fact that the inability to form a government that enjoys a numerical parliamentary majority might be a provoked rather than an actual reality. The Lebanese media outlets are filled with the details of the conditions and counter conditions inside the same majority, are lengthily tackling secret and public negotiations within the same team, and are revealing new ideas over the ways to exit the predicament. However, none of these efforts resulted in a practical step toward the formation of the government. Some might focus on the conditions of the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, General Michel Aoun, as well as his attempt to have the last say at the level of the formation process. Nonetheless, this justification collapses in any numerical or political calculation, if the other leaders in the numerical majority which named Mikati in its rush to hasten the formation are truthful, but also if Aoun's strategic ally Hezbollah is truthful about its ongoing declarations regarding its wish to facilitate the formation. The issue is not a technical or numerical one. It is a political affair falling in the context of the developments witnessed in Lebanon since 2005, i.e. since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and the Syrian military pullout from Lebanon. Indeed, in each stage of these developments (from the July war to the besieging of the Grand Serail under the premiership of Fouad al-Siniora, the May 8 military operation, the Doha accord and the international tribunal series), the main state institutions eroded and weakened in favor of popular groupings which gained more control with time. And when Saad al-Hariri's government resigned following the resignation of more than one third of its ministers - who are now part the new majority - and in light of the reactions which this resignation provoked, it seemed clear there was an effort to lead the governmental decision out of the institutions and establish a political balance of power through armed force. This is what Mikati is currently facing, and not General Aoun's pompous conditions. Mikati wanted to play his role – in cooperation with President Michel Suleiman – and form his government as a prime minister-designate. However, he was faced with these Aounist conditions that actually convey the rejection of this role by the strategic ally Hezbollah, regardless of the person assigned to carry out the formation. In light of this crisis and the absence of any executive power capable of handling the decision-making process in Lebanon, internal erosion and decay are increasing in all the state institutions and administrations. And with the obstruction of the president's constitutional role and the government's work, the erosion of the constitutional institutions from within and the marginalization of the judiciary and the administrations, the existing political system, and especially the Taif Accord and the settlement it carried have become the main target of this obstruction. The regimes in Tunisia and Egypt were toppled through wide-scale popular protests, while there are attempts to do the same in Libya and Yemen through the use of violence. As for the attempt in Lebanon, it carries an ongoing political facet as the issue extends beyond the complications affecting the government formation to the consecration of change in the political system instated by the Taif Accord. At this level, the regional circumstances and particularly the tensions that exist between the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran which failed to topple the regime in Bahrain, have placed the changing of the system in Lebanon at the top of the Iranian axis' list of priorities. It is in that sense that the domestic situation in the country is being set up, until the Iranian response enters the phase of implementation.
