Collapse of a coalition

“Politics, Religion and Sex should play no part in social or work conversations”. One of my mother’s strictures that.

Now I’ve thought of these little pieces as a social conversation with albeit rather ethereal readers. But they aren’t social (we aren’t taking coffee together) and as comments tend to come back sometimes days after writing, the conversational aspect is, to the say the least (and please don’t take this personally), slow. So, caution to the winds. Lebanon’s cabinet, made up from the start as a rather precariously sewn together sectarian patchwork quilt, fell apart on Wednesday last week. For those looking for the sex in that sentence, don’t bother, there isn’t any. In the words of the well known song though, “two out of three ain’t bad”.

There’ve been rumblings for some time with the fault line, the attitude to the results of the huge UN investigation into the assassination of a former Prime Minister, having been visible for months. That is well documented elsewhere, just let Google do its stuff if you want to know more, so enough of that here.

In other countries, if a ruling coalition falls apart, then that’s it, the ministers who’ve resigned hand over the desk and perquisite country house keys and go home. Sometimes a new executive body is formed from other groups. If not elections are prepared for. But this is Lebanon, where Alice-in-Wonderland like tricks get performed. So what has happened. The current group of ministers has been asked to stay on and keep working as a set of caretakers. And what is really odd is that’s exactly what is happening, so the ousted Prime Minister, son of the aforementioned assassination victim, is still acting Prime Minister for example. After the last elections, it took months for the executive cabinet to be put together, so he may be “acting” for some time.

How’s all that going to work out in practice? I don’t know, but daily life seems to be going on much as before. An acquaintance coming back to the country told me that the first thing he’d done was to buy the English language newspaper, The Daily Star, only to discover that “the political stories haven’t changed, they’re the same as when I left a year ago”. We were at a big party last night with the social magazine photographers snapping happily away for the next issues. The tower cranes are still working on the latest luxury high rise flats and hotels.

What it feels to me has gone though, is the optimism of five or so years ago that Lebanon would become a united country rather than a geographical accident of a group of factions with differing agendas. The country’s constitution is big on consensus, but as another friend once put it, consensus is what you’re left with when you don’t have agreement.

Maybe the politicians should listen to my mum, at least once elected and working “Politics, religion and sex should play no part ….”