Describing himself as Lebanon's “prime Sunni” is not enough for Najib Mikati to gain representative legitimacy, as everyone knows by what coercion his 68 votes were gathered. Indeed, those who have brought him to power, or “supported him” as has been said, have a clear and well-known program he is required to implement, even if gradually – one that calls for Lebanon to join the regional coalition that is being formed under the leadership of Tehran and Damascus. If he finds this difficult to do for one reason or another, personal or objective, they will feel no pang of conscience when they rush to replace him and bring one who would pledge to them his ability to “sectarianize” the Sunnis and put them back in the internal Lebanese “bottle”. He has been preceded in this experiment by Omar Karami. Indeed, the Sunnis in Lebanon were never a sect and have not yet become one. In fact, they are a state with trans-sectarian institutions in the making. All that they have suffered in the past and could suffer in the future is only the price of such a conviction and of such plans, and the tribute imposed on them for refusing to commit to the limits defined by Syrian-Iranian tutelage for each sect, and for the relations of each of them with other sects, in such a way as to make them easier to control, individually and separately. When Rafic Hariri came to power, he brought with him plans of rebuilding the state, which had broken down during the Civil War years and had not been saved by Syrian presence. Rebuilding the state then meant establishing a successful formula for coexistence between the sects, one that would bring them out of their divisions and their ghettos, moving the country into a new phase that would assert its Arab nature and its special relationship with Damascus without leaving it an arena open to regional and international contradictions. Those plans were thwarted with a policy of nuisances and vexations, then by force, because a state of unifying institutions would reduce the margin of interference and eliminate opportunities for tutelage. Saad came to carry on the same process after his father, and was faced with the same obstacles. Both the father and the son paid the price for clinging to openness towards the remaining Lebanese, Christians, Druze and Shiite equally – the former physically and the latter politically. The main “objection” to Rafic Hariri and then to Saad Hariri, despite the disparity of circumstances, has been that they led and are leading a coalition that exceeds the Sunnis to include the other components of society. And there was always the undeclared demand from Hariri Jr. to dismantle the March 14 Alliance and to be content with leading only his own sect. Such pressures were not restricted to him, but included all of the members of the new coalition that arose after the withdrawal of the Syrian Army from Lebanon in the wake of the earth-shattering events of 2005. Such a policy has been successful in returning the Druze to their historical position of “fear” for their survival. It has also been able to breach the Christians by playing on the personal ambitions of some of them, and doubtless the next target will be those among them who still refuse to submit to tutelage yet again and proclaim their identification with the idea of the state and their desire to defend it. Saad Hariri has been politically “assassinated”, but the battle being waged against him might not stop. He must become “convinced” that he is the leader of only part of the Sunnis, even if it is the largest part, and he must agree that the Sunnis are just a “sect”, and not the extension of a broader nation. Indeed, the provocations that were practiced against the Sunnis by Hezbollah and its allies, as well as the policy of coercion and defiance, were not the result of mistakes or miscalculations. In fact, such a policy was deliberate and aimed at driving them into a sectarian position that would justify the opposing fanaticism and make them equivalent. And although what happened on Tuesday in Tripoli and in Beirut, in terms of protests that sometimes overstepped their boundaries, was an expression of the feeling of oppression from being targeted in this manner and from this insistence on making them submit, Hariri's ability to bring the street under control swiftly means that he is still the country's “prime Sunni” and that he has not agreed to relinquish his unifying convictions.
