Líbano
2011 (27 mayo) - Ataque a las UNIFIL
Attack on UNIFIL (US State Dpt., May 27, 2011)
2010-2011 Caída y Nuevo Gobierno
Sobre la caída del anterior Gobierno, ver aquí.
In Lebanon, New Cabinet Is Influenced by Hezbollah (Nada Bakri, June 13, 2011) - de cuyas conclusiones discrepan aquí Lebanon forms a government (Surfing the Casbah, June 14, 2011)
Lebanon: I Was Wrong! Hizballah (Plus Syria and Iran) Is Even More in Control (Barry Rubin, July 1, 2011): "... now Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has announced his cabinet. And guess what? Hizballah has 70 percent of the ministries!"
Thirty-member government announced in Lebanon after five- month vacuum (Mirella Hodeib, June 14, 2011):
Lebanon's new Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced Monday a 30-member government line-up nearly five months after he was designated for the post.
The announcement of the new Lebanese cabinet witnessed a precedent with the Shiite community relinquishing one of the six cabinet seats allotted to it by the constitution for a Sunni.
According to Lebanon's power-sharing system which is mainly based on sectarian grounds, government and parliament seats are equally shared between religions and sects.
The announcement was also preceded by a summit at the presidential palace between Mikati, President Michel Suleiman and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, when the latter informed the president and prime minister of the Shiite community's decision to abandon one seat from its governmental share so as to facilitate the birth of the new cabinet.
The government formation process faced numerous snags concerning government shares mainly the Sunni and Christian shares. But despite giving up one minister from their share, the March 8 alliance headed by Shiite armed group Hezbollah was allotted the biggest share of government seats, which amounted to 17.
The centrist bloc, which Mikati represents was allotted seven portfolios, while the share of President Michel Suleiman consisted of two portfolios and the Druze Progressive Socialist Party counts three representatives in the new government.
The key Interior Ministry portfolio, which was vied by both the President and Hezbollah's ally Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, was allotted to a consensus figure.
In a sign that regional and international conditions have become ripe for the Lebanese government to see the light, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad phone Suleiman and Berri to congratulate them on the new cabinet.
Toward a Radical Lebanon? (Jacques Neriah, June 16, 2011):
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati recently succeeded in forming a new government dominated by the Hizbullah-led March 8 alliance, thus ending a deadlock that left the divided country in a power vacuum for almost five months.
The thirty-member cabinet was a result of more than four months of tough bargaining, political wrangling and harsh talk in the media that involved the March 8 alliance, President Michel Sleimane and Najib Mikati, over who would get government portfolios.
Out of the thirty members, the Hizbullah coalition now holds eighteen seats, eight more than in the previous Hariri cabinet. But breaking with tradition, the new cabinet also includes five Shi’ite ministers instead of the normal six, while Sunnis received one extra seat for a total of seven portfolios. Shi’ite Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri ceded a Shi’ite cabinet seat at the last minute to help break the deadlock over the representation of the former Sunni opposition by Faysal Karameh, son of former Prime Minister Omar Karameh.
A breakdown of the cabinet lineup shows clearly that Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun emerged the biggest winner, with ten portfolios, followed by Mikati with six. President Sleimane has three ministers; Berri’s Amal movement has two ministers while Hizbullah retained two seats. One cabinet seat went to Ali Qanso, representing the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.
No doubt this cabinet lineup dramatically underlines the unprecedented dominance of Hizbullah in Lebanon, giving its Syrian and Iranian patrons greater sway in the Middle East.
Learning from Lebanon's cabinet (Michael Singh, June 15, 2011):
This week, Lebanon served up a reminder for the United States and the partisans of the Arab uprisings: don't count your democracies before they've hatched. Having thrown off the yoke of Syrian occupation in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon once again finds itself under the control of Iran and Syria. Allies of these two countries, including Hezbollah, control the majority of the posts in the new Lebanese cabinet announced on Monday.
This development is a blow to freedom and sovereignty in Lebanon, and a setback for U.S. interests in the region. It holds, however, two lessons which, if taken to heart, can help Arab democrats and U.S. policymakers successfully entrench democracy in places like Egypt and Tunisia.
The first of these lessons is that extremists are capable of exploiting democratic institutions to undermine democracy itself.
(...) The second lesson of Hezbollah's ascendancy is the need for sustained U.S. engagement with nascent democracies.