What role will Hezbollah play in Lebanon’s future government?

Back in March there was failure to agree on a new cabinet. Aoun wants Hariri to step aside. Hezbollah has refused suggestions that the cabinet be made up of technocrats. “A government of technocrats that is not backed by political groups won’t save the country,” Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah said in March.

In May the crisis continued. Nasrallah at this time was getting sick with an undisclosed illness. Hariri told parliament that “the truth of what is happening is that the president of the republic tells the deputies in his message: ‘You named a prime minister, I do not want him, and I will not allow him to form a government. Please, get rid of him.’ This is an attempt to absolve the president of the republic from the accusation of obstructing the formation of the government,” according to reports. According to Arab News former US Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs David Schenker said in an interview with Al-Hurra channel on Friday that “President Aoun and MP Gebran Bassil, the president’s son-in-law, do not want a technocratic government that begins with reforms because that would undermine Hezbollah’s position, as well as some political ambitions of Lebanese politicians.”

Now parliament speaker Nabih Berri appears to be siding with Hezbollah. The posts in Lebanon’s government are dominated by sectarianism. Aoun is a Christian, Hariri a Sunni, Berri a Shi’ite. “Experts argue the main stumbling block to the formation of a new government is still the issue of the ‘blocking third’ of portfolios, with Hariri now wanting to know the affiliation of the two Christian ministers who will enter the government when the number of its members is raised to 24, as Berri suggested,” says The Arab Weekly.

Iran is taking an interest in seeing its ally Hezbollah receive more power. Hezbollah has established contacts with the incumbent Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the head of the Lebanese National Free Movement, Gibran Basil, according to Tasnim.  “According to the report, Hezbollah representatives told Saad Hariri that they had talked to Lebanese President Michel Aoun about the need to resolve the issue of forming a government, and that Gibran Basil had emphasized that he would not complicate the process of forming a cabinet. The Lebanese nationalist leader also told Hezbollah representatives that he was positively interacting with the initiative of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on the issue of forming a government, and that negative signals should not be allowed to dominate the cabinet.”

Hariri now has. another week to sort things out. “The differences are not limited to these barriers, but there are major differences over ministries, especially government posts. The Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Justice are among the posts that are highly sensitive because they are key and because they have to deal with the important affairs of the country after the formation of the government,” Tasnim says. The report admits that Lebanon needs a government to deal with its crises.

“Today, the crisis has become an everyday term for Lebanese citizens, a term that defines all aspects of their lives throughout the day and night; From long queues for petrol quotas to rising power outages, drug and healthcare crises, garbage dumping on the streets, restrictions on access to bank accounts, the endless surge in prices for basic goods and, of course, the ongoing political upheaval that prevents government formation. In such a situation, the World Bank has warned in its latest report about the collapse of the Lebanese economy and its socio-security consequence,” says Iran’s Tasnim.

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