Please, a government that speaks to us

The news on Wednesday from Nabih Berri was that we are closer to a new government than anyone thought. If the Parliament speaker’s optimism is justified, that’s good news for Saad Hariri, the prime minister designate, whose imperturbability is beginning to look, dangerously, like lethargy as Lebanon nears the two-month mark after parliamentary elections.

Attention had focused on whether the opposition would continue to demand veto power in the government. Berri’s statements suggested that we may now be beyond that undertaking to turn the March 14 electoral victory into brine. But even if the crisis persists, Hariri must do several things before the government is formed to ensure its success, as well as his own and that of his allies. The June victory has evaporated in the minds of those who favored the majority. Voting against Hizbullah and Michel Aoun was the easy part. What many people are now wondering is what they voted for, and no good answer has been forthcoming.

Hariri must identify clear-cut problems the government intends to address. To promise to fix the economy is meaningless; people want something palpable, something they can measure. Water shortages, electricity outages, gridlocked traffic, high gasoline prices, and a myriad of other problems that the Lebanese have to deal with on a daily basis will soon be Saad Hariri’s problems. He has to show that he is prepared for them, and say so publicly. Begin with the electricity sector, the most blatant mark of state incompetence. Let Hariri promise us that by the next elections Lebanon will have 24 hours of power a day, or something nearing that. Voters on both sides of the divide chose representatives whom they felt might bring in a more effective state. They’re waiting.

Secondly, Hariri has to draw attention to those around him likely to make things better once offered a Cabinet portfolio. In other words he has to associate his future ministers, particularly those from his own Future movement, with strong ideas or programs that the Lebanese will embrace. President Michel Sleiman managed to do that with Ziyad Baroud, a virtual unknown when he was scooped up from the thankless byways of Lebanese civil society activism. Hariri can show that he intends to promote men and women who fit into a governing strategy that he and his team have developed (which means convincing us, first, that he actually has such a strategy). And he should do this now, before finalizing the government, to make it more costly politically for the opposition to hinder his efforts.

A third thing Hariri must do before formally becoming prime minister is to communicate better with the Lebanese. Silence may be defensible when it comes to bargaining over a government, but it makes no sense at all for Hariri to say nothing to those who voted for him – or for that matter against him. What does he stand for? Why should he be prime minister over someone else? What lies ahead? All these questions need to be addressed with much more openness than they have been.

Hizbullah’s secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has doubtless made several speeches too many for some tastes – speeches that go on forever, without respite. But he has also communicated directly with his followers, explaining what he stands for, therefore what they are entitled to expect from him. Despite Nasrallah’s banishment to a subterranean refuge, he has avoided appearing distant or equivocal, which has strengthened him politically. Hariri would gain by doing the same.

A fourth thing the prime minister designate should do is avoid any sense that his work will revolve around non-Lebanese priorities. March 14 won because many voters, particularly Christian voters, came to the conclusion, exaggerated or not, that Hizbullah and Aoun were serving an Iranian agenda that harmed Lebanon. The worst thing that can happen to Hariri, therefore, is for him to be pegged as the mere extension of a Saudi agenda. It may be tempting to rely on regional transformations, particularly events in Iran, to increase the majority’s leverage. But relying too much on this will backfire. The more vulnerable Hizbullah feels the more inflexibly it will behave, even as the Lebanese will blame Hariri more than they will anyone else for deadlock over the government.

The idea that there is no price to pay for an ongoing vacuum at the head of the state is naïve. Hizbullah has already taken advantage of the situation to accelerate its erosion of Resolution 1701 and reduce UNIFIL’s margin of maneuver in southern Lebanon. Hariri is also losing grip over his allies, so that Walid Jumblatt, for instance, can no longer truly be counted as a member of the March 14 coalition. Yet Jumblatt has not strayed off the reservation: He has positioned his political realignment in the context of the Saudi-Syrian rapprochement. Therefore he continues to enjoy Saudi approval and aid, which means there is little Hariri can do about it.

But the most unnecessary price Hariri will pay if he plays the process of government formation wrong is in his popular backing. The elections reinforced Hariri’s power, which he should have used to better define himself to the Lebanese. By failing to do so until now he has lost his post-election momentum, so that voters are unsure about what he represents. Whenever the state is mentioned, cynicism dominates the conversation. That tarnishes Hariri and will handicap him down the road, because his political enemies will use the state’s shortcomings against him.

It benefits no one for Lebanon to continue without a government, or for the person who will lead that government to remain a cipher. Saad Hariri was the big winner on June 7, and the Lebanese want to know more about his project. In this particular case it is silence that is silver and speech gold.