Almost one month and a week [April 6] after he was charged with forming a new Lebanese government, it seems that Beirut MP Tammam Salam of the Saad Hariri bloc has reached a dead end. It appears that the options available to him to break the impasse range from bad (declining the task, and thus keeping the country in a [political] vacuum) to worse (for example, moving towards a confrontational scenario). More importantly, these events could happen at any time.
There are several reasons for Salam’s failure to form a new government, based on the perspectives of both parties to the conflict. In the end, however, there is only one result. The Hariri bloc alliance and the alliance of Gen. Michel Aoun and the Shiite forces have not reached an agreement on quotas pertaining to the distribution of ministerial posts in the new government. There has also been no agreement on ministerial portfolios. The Aoun-Shiite forces alliance demanded that each team receive ministerial representation proportionate with its representation in the current parliament. Salam and the Hariri team rejected this proposal and insisted on keeping a one-third stake in the government reserved for the president, prime minister and [Druze] MP Walid Jumblatt.
