Opening a new page to the unknown

At last, Lebanon has a government headed by the designate prime minister, Saad Hariri. This much is good news! The new government, however, was more than nine months in the making; something that suggests that it could be more fragile and short-lived than expected.

A Cabinet of 30 ministers, with only four women, does not signal much optimism. But who knows, maybe what the new government is all about is what the country needs at this point in time. The fact of the matter in Lebanon is that the country's political landscape is too fractious and divided to be able to forge a national unity government. That is what Lebanon is all about, at least for the time being.

Nothing seems to work to unite the country's political parties major political issues. Therefore, many questions pop up now about the new painstakingly-assembled government. For starters, why only four women out of a 30-Cabinet-member government? If Lebanon, of all Arab countries, cannot do better than that in the direction of gender equality, what can be expected of the other Arab states? And why such a large Cabinet? In the Middle East, it seems that the smaller the country is, the bigger is the Cabinet!

The worst scenario that emerges from the political scene in Lebanon after the formation of the new government is the proposition that Lebanon is no longer one nation as in the old happy days, but rather several tiny ones; each determined to occupy a bigger role than it is entitled to under normal democratic rules to steer the country to the unknown.

As in the old Arab saying, there are just too many "fingers" playing havoc with the political scene in Lebanon. These interfering fingers are no longer just of Arab origin, but rather from other regional and non-regional origins.

God help Lebanon, as the odds against its unity are getting more compounded by the day.