By announcing its political manifesto, Hezbollah has blocked the path of three tracks – political, constitutional and economic – that represent the vital bases which the Lebanese, in their overwhelming silent majority, were hoping to lead them towards rebuilding their state, as well as the system they had agreed over in the Taif Agreement (which was not mentioned in the document, not even once), bring them out of the vicious circle of division and civil clashes, both overt and concealed, and define the perspectives of a different future for coming generations. Indeed, the content of the manifesto, despite some utopian clichés approaching Plato's Republic, very simply means that the current situation will go on indefinitely, or that what resulted from the imbalanced struggle between an armed organized force and a spontaneous civilian population has become a consecrated matter, one that cannot be broken away from under the current balance of power. In detail, Hezbollah has informed the Lebanese that there was no way democracy, as generally defined in the whole world, would be applied in their country, and that the idea of elections itself, as stated in the constitution, no longer carries any meaning or importance. Indeed, when it stresses on the fact that consensual democracy is the only available option, it means to say that whatever the results of any elections that take place in the future, their impact will not be any greater than that of this year's elections, which produced a clear majority that cannot rule nor formulate a program it would implement, but rather finds itself forced to concede part of its powers and to allow the minority to participate in rule, and in fact to grant it ministerial portfolios that exceed its size and accept to remain under the mercy of threats of obstruction. In other words, this effectively changes the constitutional system without clearly declaring to do so. In politics, on the other hand, the manifesto also cancels out the role and the effects of the National Dialogue council, which was formed to look into the main issues of dispute between the Lebanese, and particularly the issue of weapons, when it asserts that “the resistance will remain” as long as does the state of Israel, that it will “continue to boost its [military] capacity”, and that its cooperation with the army had been “a complementary process that proved to be successful” and should continue. This means that there is no longer any use for dialogue over the “defense strategy”, since Hezbollah has determined its stance of remaining a military entity separate from the state, with what this will involve in terms of decisions taken at its discretion, connected to its own understanding and assessment of any development in the region, and to what it could consider to be political and security “necessities” that can always exceed the geographical framework of Lebanon. Hezbollah spoke in its manifesto of a “just and capable state”, listing tasks for it which economically and socially advanced great powers bear with great difficulty, purposely making it impossible in order to justify its refusal to acknowledge the prevalent concept of building the state – any state – in the sense of accepting it as a permanent entity that can be developed. This is followed by asserting the party's commitment to the Velayat-e-Faqih, which it says is a doctrinal principle not open for discussion. But what if the Iranian republic of the Velayat-e-Faqih, whose guardians assert to be in a “fateful confrontation” nearly with the whole world, decides to call upon the assistance of its followers and partisans, and among them Hezbollah? And we should remember the questions that arose over the timing of the operation to kidnap the two Israeli soldiers that led to the war of the summer of 2006, having occurred a few weeks after international sanctions against Iran were strengthened. In its manifesto, Hezbollah blames the “other” Lebanese for not having built the ideal state that “establishes justice between people” and for not having adopted “real” democracy, based on abolishing political sectarianism, while the party itself forbids diversity within the ranks of its own sect and in the areas under its control, and goes on to assert its legitimacy purely on the basis of sectarian representation. One cannot give what one does not have.
