What Lebanese Democracy?

Maybe the Elias Sports Bureau is keeping track of the number of times the Lebanese parliament has postponed electing a new president since last summer. In Lebanon and elsewhere, everyone has lost count. Not that it matters how many times the election has been postponed or, apparently, whether Lebanon has a new president. It appears to be functioning as dysfunctionally as ever without one.

The head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, was in Beirut on Sunday and Monday, trying yet again to mediate an agreement between the Hezbollah-led opposition Free Patriotic Movement and the ruling March 14 coalition led by parliamentary leader Saad Hariri and former president Amin Gemayel. (Hariri is the son of Rafik Hariri, the Sunni prime minister assassinated in February 2005; Gemayel, a Maronite Christian, is the father of Pierre Gemayel, the member of parliament assassinated in November 2006; Amin is also the brother of Bashir Gemayel, who was president-elect when he was assassinated in 1982. That brief history of bloodletting gives you an impression of where Lebanon's leaders are coming from when they sit at a negotiating table, thinking the people across from them may well have conspired in their fathers' and brothers' and sons' murders.)

Moussa failed and left Beirut. There's agreement between all parties that the next president should be Michel Suleiman, general of the Lebanese armed forces (and victor of last year's battle of Nahr el Bared). But there's no agreement over the make-up of the government--how its 30 ministers are to be divided. The opposition is willing to have 10 ministers, leaving 10 ministers to be controlled by the president and 10 by the March 14 coalition--as long as the president's ministers don't vote on "crucial" issues. But that's just another recipe for stalemate.

So is the ongoing argument over government's make-up. The opposition appears happy to drag things out. The March 14 coalition appears incapable of presenting a compelling formula for a breakthrough. And the Lebanese themselves are somewhere between fed up and indifferent, adopting the hyper-pragmatic attitude that as long as the guns are silent, there's no need to worry.

As for Lebanese democracy, it's an illusion, Marc Sirois, managing editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, argues: "The overall picture is just that: a picture of democracy with none of the depth that holds us together."

Read More About Lebanon's Political Stalemate:

• Lebanese Presidential Elections: Defined by Strife
• Lebanon on "the Brink of an Abyss"
• Lebanon: Country Profile