Aoun-Salam Have Lost Credibility; They are Now the Establishment-Manzoumé

After pumping up the Lebanese people's hopes of a better tomorrow with an inaugural speech rich in reformist ideas, President Joseph Aoun is turning out to be just another establishment shill who seems to have achieved his ultimate objective: to sit in the presidential chair with a blissful smile and dispense wise advice to anyone visiting him. He lectures his visitors on proper governance - like yesterday when he was encouraging a delegation of judges to be independent and fair.

But he himself has not yet done anything to show the Lebanese people that he has what it takes to impose his stated objectives and will and begin steering the country away from the ills of the past 50 years. 

He and his appointed prime minister Nawwaf Salam continue to haggle with the criminal losers of Hezbollah and Amal (the two shiite parties that have cause the ruin of the country with corruption, lawlessness and useless wars that they always lose). The Shiite duo wants to retain control of the Finance Ministry, which they've monopolized throughtout the Syrian occupation and to our present time. During that time, they siphoned funds provided by international donors to fill their own pockets, pay their criminal terrorists, embezzle and launder, and manufacture weapons, dig their "resistance" tunnels, assassinate people (journalists, politicians and other whistleblowers), manufacture Captagon for resale for profit across the region and the world, and carry out huge smuggling operations across the lawless Lebanese Syrian border. 

Because the Lebanese are obssessed with money, the Finance Minister in any government must sign and approve any decision by the government. For instance, if the government decides to appoint judges to vacant positions on the Supreme Court, and the latter cannot adjudicate any issue before it unless it is complete, the Shiite Finance Minister refuses to sign and the government's decision is not implemented. In the case of the Beirut Harbior explosion, for example, the Shiite Hezbollah Finance Minister has refused to approve such a decision that would allow the Supreme Court to facilitate the Independent Investigator's job of pursuing the mostly Shiite officials responsible for the explosion.

This is only one example of how the Finance Minister can derail an entire administration by blocking any decision.

And that is why the Shiite parties - that have now been decimated during their last war with Israel -  continue to hang on to the Finance Ministry because it is their last opportunity to remain relevant. 

But Aoun and Salam continue to cajole the Shiite duo with endless negotiations. On one hand, Aoun and Salam know that keeping Finance in the hands of the Shiite renegades would essentially kill the new administration's chances at succeeding in their stated reformist objectives. On the other hand, Aoun and Salam fear the "strife" that may ensue from a despondent Shiite duo without the Finance portfolio. "Strife" is code word for Hezbollah to take the streets like it did in May 2008, restart its assassinations and car-bombings campaign, or even trigger a war between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army.

With the criminal Zionists refusing to withdraw from the south as all resolutions ad agreements require it to do, it seems that Israel wants to give Hezbollah all the pretexts it needs to continue its "resistance", which in turn give Israel its own pretexts to "fight terrorism" by stealing land, destroying all life in the south with the ultimate objective of annexing the Lebanese south and colonizing it like it doing in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan.

Aoun and Salam have only one option to salvage whatever remains of this lemon republic called Lebanon: Assemble a government with politically unaffiliated ministers they choose regardless of whether the establishment parties like it or not. Let the parliament (now controlled by criminals, warlords and other establishment parties) retaliate by giving the new government a no-confidence vote, and let the chips fall where they may. 

Aoun and Salam must break the deadlock - now several decades old - that the warlords and traditional parties continue to cause. The country hasn't evolved one bit since the late 1960s. To the contrary, it has receded back into an ungovernable mess, a cesspool of untold corruption. In the late 1960s, people had running water, 24-hour electricity, and functioning telephone networks. Now 60 years later, the country does not provide 24-hour electricity, there is no running water, and the communications world has fundamentally changed though it remains the monopoly of the politicians in power.

Can you ask the same establishment of warlords, feudal lords and religious neanderthals, that has brought the country to its knees to stop enriching itself, to implement reforms and fight its own corruption? The answer is a srceaming no. So how should Aoun and Salam break through the wall of filth? They should put up a fight, one whose outcome would be decisive, even at the cost of a civil war. The time has come to end the charade by any means available.

If they put up a fight, even if bloody, the outcome could be one of two things:

- Either they keep the country together and succeed in propelling it into a better future,

- Or we all would come to terms with the fact that Lebanon is not a country, it is a dysfunctional horde of religious tribes that should be dismantled into at least two large independent entities - one Christian and one Muslim - each free to run its affairs the way it wishes.

The 100+ years-long experiment of tolerance and coexistence, that of the monstrosity of Greater Lebanon, has utterly failed. If Aoun and Salam are unable to rescue this decaying corpse, then let it rot and decompose. 

If Aoun and Salam want the first option, they must bang of the table and impose their government.