| | | Date: Aug 29, 2018 | | Source: The Daily Star |  |  |  |
| | Is the deputy premiership worth fighting over? | Benjamin Redd| The Daily Star
BEIRUT: It’s one of the highest positions in government, a part of fraught negotiations over the next Cabinet. President Michel Aoun wants it. The Lebanese Forces want it.
Yet it’s ... largely symbolic?
The deputy premiership sounds impressive, but it’s mentioned nowhere in the Constitution; the Taif Accord, which ended the Lebanese Civil War; or even the internal rules of Cabinet.
Despite the name, therefore, the deputy prime minister has no power to stand in for the prime minister, except possibly under very specific and limited circumstances.
So why are the FPM and the LF so eagerly chasing this post?
The dispute began in earnest in late June, when Aoun, founder of the Free Patriotic Movement, claimed it was the president’s right to choose the deputy premier, citing post-Taif precedent.
The LF has staunchly opposed the idea, demanding that it should receive either the deputy premiership or a so-called sovereign portfolio – the Foreign, Defense, Interior and Finance ministries.
“The importance is not constitutional; it’s more of a moral and political [issue],” says Baabda MP Alain Aoun, a senior FPM member.
“It’s part of the standoff between the two [parties].”
“We take it from another point of view as the FPM; we take it as precedent” that the president should be the one to appoint the deputy premier, Aoun says.
But that precedent cuts both ways, argues Ghassan Hasbani, the current caretaker deputy premier and a member of the LF. He points to Fouad Siniora’s government of 2008, in which Issam Abu Jamra was appointed deputy prime minister as part of the FPM’s share, not that of then-President Michel Sleiman.
Another case against precedent would be Hasbani himself – appointed in 2016 as part of the LF’s share, not President Aoun’s.
That, however, was a special case, MP Aoun says. “We gave this to them as compensation for not getting a sovereign ministry.”
This year, the LF again wants one of the two. But why?
“If [the position] is done well and adhered to properly, if there’s good chemistry between the deputy prime minister and prime minister, there is a great deal of power [in it],” Hasbani says.
He cites three principal reasons for the unstated power of his office.
First, “the deputy prime minister typically chairs ministerial committees at the direction of the prime minister. It depends on how much weight the prime minister puts on the deputy prime minister.”
This could be particularly important in the next Cabinet, he says, which is expected to have several committees to follow up on commitments made at the CEDRE donor conference held in Paris in April to support Lebanon’s infrastructure and economy.
Second, the deputy premier sits next to the prime minister during Cabinet meetings – a minor but an important perk. “It’s not just ‘nice’; you can have more of a discussion [with the prime minister] than any other minister [can],” Hasbani says.
Finally, the job has a certain cachet. It carries “a certain level of access,” Hasbani says, based on both the title and the level of confidence the prime minister places in his deputy.
For Hasbani, all of this means that the position can be very effective – and is something to be discussed in negotiations over Cabinet formation. Still, he concedes, it is less powerful than several other ministerial posts.
So why is so much attention focused on it?
MP Aoun has an answer: the fraught relationship between the country’s two leading Christian parties. “Because of the tension that exists between us and the LF, [the issue] took this dimension,” he says.
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