MACRON HOPED TO BRING BASIL TO PARIS THIS MONTH, BUT...
Immediately after the port explosion last August, French President Emmanuel Macron came to Beirut, carrying a proposal. In addition to demanding political, monetary, and administrative reforms, the French initiative aimed at breaking the monopoly of political parties, demanding rotation of cabinet posts.
Meaning the portfolio of Interior would no longer be reserved for the Future Party, nor would Defence be for the FPM or Finance for the Amal Movement. When meeting Macron for the second time in September, leaders nodded affirmatively to his suggestion.
But when it came to cabinet formation, they failed to deliver.
Berri made claim to the Finance Ministry, Aoun to Defence, and
Hariri to Interior. Macron was supposed to make another trip to Beirut last December but got locked down in Paris with Covid-19.
Macron was hoping to bring Basil to Paris this April, for a one-on-one with Hariri. The two men had managed to sort out such an agreement back in 2016, when they jointly named three Christian ministers out of 30 ministers in Hariri’s first cabinet under the Aoun presidency. The Hezbollah-backed, pro-Aoun daily Al Akhbar reported a phone conversation between Basil and an adviser to the French President.
When asked if Hariri was coming to Paris, the reply was: “He cannot refuse.” Based on those words, Basil agreed to make the trip, requesting a meeting with Macron. He desperately needed the international exposure, especially after being ignored by all foreign diplomats visiting Beirut, the most recent of whom were Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameeh Shukri and Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League Hussam Zaki. It was Hariri who backed out, however, claiming that his schedule was full, with a Moscow visit scheduled on April 13 and a Vatican visit on April 22. Hariri also made it clear that he preferred that the meeting is arranged in Beirut, and that concrete concessions are extracted beforehand from both Basil and Aoun.
He claimed that he has already walked an extra mile to accommodate the president, insisting that under no conditions will Aoun get the right to name all Christian ministers. “Neither initiative will work” said Hilal Khashan, veteran professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Speaking to Gulf News, he explained: “Forming a cabinet means initiating reform, which would implicate the entire political class. In the unlikely event that Hariri and Basil form a cabinet, the emerging civil society will not like it because the leaders who impoverished Lebanon cannot rebuild it.”