Lebanon relives Rafiq Hariri's assassination in political paralysis

"The assassination of Rafiq Hariri signalled the end of Lebanon's renaissance," says Rima Tarabay, a former communications adviser and member of the team that guided the then prime minister in the shadows, almost two decades later. The detonation of a bomb packed with more than 1,000 kilos of TNT killed her as she was walking through downtown Beirut with 21 other people. "It was terrible, because it meant the collapse of everything I believed in, as well as the death of the man who saved Lebanon after the civil war," she recalls in a conversation with Atalayar on the 18th anniversary of his assassination. 

In 2020, the judges of the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon tried in absentia three Hezbollah members implicated in the attack but could only prove the involvement of one of them, Salim Jamil Ayyash. The Shiite militia refused to cooperate in the case. The sole perpetrator remains at large 18 years after the traumatic event that marked Lebanon's future. "Valentine's Day reminds me of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, executed with so much explosive material that I could hear it five miles away," tweets user Hanin Hannouch. "His memory remains painful, because his death was also Lebanon's descent into hell".

Tarabay agrees that the situation has only worsened since then. "Hariri's plans were plans for reconstruction, independence, implementation of the Taif Agreement - which certified the end of the civil war - that could lead the country towards a secular state, which is the only solution to save Lebanon," she tells this newspaper. Instead, says his former communications advisor, the current scenario "is the worst Lebanon has ever gone through sectarian thinking, a collapsing economy and no vision for the future". 

His son and political heir, Saad Hariri, returned home on Sunday night from his retirement in the United Arab Emirates, where he lives, to attend the official commemoration of his father's assassination in downtown Beirut. The former Prime Minister before his definitive resignation in July 2021 after the umpteenth government crisis took the opportunity to take a bath in front of his people at the capital's mausoleum where his father's tombstone is located, in a scene of enormous symbolism.

But Hariri's powerful image clashes with Lebanon's pressing political, confessional and institutional divide. Former President Michel Aoun's mandate expired in October. Since then, parliament has failed to agree on a successor. This is by no means the first power vacuum in the country. Indeed, Aoun's appointment came in 2016 after more than two years without a head of state. But the context is much more serious than then, especially from an economic point of view. It is the biggest crisis of its kind in centuries, according to the World Bank.

Parliament has held 11 sessions in the last four months to elect a candidate. But the script has always been the same: in the first round of voting, no candidate reaches the required number of votes; in the second round, MPs absent themselves, breaking the required quorum. The favourite, Michel Moawad, received only 34 votes in the last ballot, far short of the 86 required for a majority to qualify for the second round. At least thirty MPs cast blank votes and others used the ballot paper to protest or dither with the candidates. Names such as Nelson Mandela or Bernie Sanders, the US senator, were read out. 

The parliament, chaired by the veteran Nabih Berri, is still on hiatus and has not met since 19 January, and the international community has decided to act. Five Western powers met last week in Paris to find solutions, particularly on economic issues. But the strongest step so far has been taken by the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, which sent their ambassadors to Beirut to meet with the acting Prime Minister, the tycoon Najib Mikati.

Mikati and the rest of his cabinet are standing idly by. The interim government is without most of its prerogatives in the absence of presidential authority at a critical time. The value of the Lebanese pound reached a new record low at the end of January after losing 90 per cent of its value in the last four years. The exchange rate now stands at 16,130 Lebanese pounds per euro, when it has been sustained in recent months at close to 1,600 pounds per euro. As a result, almost 80% of the population lives in poverty. It is an unprecedented financial, economic and social collapse. 

Meanwhile, the political class remains divided over the role Hezbollah should play in the institutions. The perpetrators of the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri run a parallel state within the decaying Lebanese state. The Shiite militia, a regional ally of Iran, holds 13 seats in parliament, plus the 14 of its partners in the Amal Movement and the 17 of former president Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, with whom it has a pact. To date, all three oppose the best-placed candidate to succeed the former president, Michel Moawad, who meets the only requirement for the post: being a Maronite Christian.

Michel, the son of Rene Moawad, the president who was assassinated in 1989 after 17 days in office, has the backing of the anti-Hizbullah bloc, the self-styled "opposition", including the party with the most seats in parliament, Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, which observers see as the divisive actor preventing an agreement between the parties. Moawad will have to win the support of Hezbollah and its partners to become president, as Aoun himself had to do before. However, in the face of the prolonged stalemate, the name of Joseph Aoun, the commander of the armed forces, is beginning to be bandied about in Beirut's media as a possible alternative for unity.