There was no need for the criticism which the leadership of the Kataeb (Phalange) Party directed at the performance of the March 14 Alliance, nor for MP Walid Jumblatt's departure from the alliance before that, to bring to light the question of what remains of this alliance, even before the formation of the so-called “national unity” government cabinet. As its name indicates, the birth of the March 14 Alliance came as a direct reaction to the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The crowded demonstration witnessed by this day in 2005 in Downtown Beirut, a month after the assassination, brought together parties from every direction under the banner of what was then named the Cedar Revolution, raising the slogan of restoring sovereignty, the most prominent translation of which was the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. The Hariri assassination had a tremendous impact internally and in the region, and regional as well as international circumstances were favorable to the independence movement. Yet the four years that have passed since that day were sure to change many circumstances. Those who stood against this movement internally have proven their ability to obstruct political life if matters in the country did not stand as they wished. The long-drawn-out demonstration in Downtown Beirut, the sealing of the Parliament, and the crippling of the work of the Fouad Siniora government (before the Doha Agreement) were only messages to those concerned of what could befall the country if the stances and demands of opposition parties were not taken into consideration. Democratic considerations were not the standard in the opposition's activity at every level. Rather, force, the force protected by Hezbollah's weapons, “which are not used internally”, was alone what imposed the nature of the balance of power, as the experience faced by the Siniora government on May 7 proved. At the foreign level, the changes were not few either, and it was inevitable for the March 14 Alliance to be affected by their many consequences. Jacques Chirac is no longer the French President. George Bush has left the White House. The predicament of negotiations with the Palestinians under the Netanyahu government has done away with the pretexts of defending agreements and has returned consideration to the slogans of the “defiant”. Gathering around the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to try those implicated in the assassinations, which had represented one of the “achievements” of the March 14 Alliance, has been confronted with the obstacles of “fraudulent” witnesses and of the release of the four generals, whom the Cedar Revolution had carried banners accusing them of the assassination. It was only natural for all of this to have an impact on the logic by which the independence alliance was putting forth its issues. Even when March 14 supporters wagered on the recent legislative elections, and tried to make of their victory in those elections a “democratic” gateway to implementing their slogans of sovereignty, whether concerning weapons internally, the future of relations with Syria or the implementation of UN resolutions, they were confronted with obstruction yet again, under the guise of the necessity of establishing a “national unity government”. It is no mystery or secret that this arrangement, which the Saad Hariri government ended up forced to accept, after more than five months of arm-wrestling, was not the arrangement which the leader of the Future Movement bloc, one of the pillars of the March 14 Alliance, had wanted, nor his allies in this coalitions, Sunnis among them as well as Christians, nor even the President of the Republic, who had on several occasions voiced stances calling for “rule by the majority and opposition by the minority”, which is the same stance that has been and continues to be adopted by Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir. And when the new Prime Minister Saad Hariri, at the first occasion after having assumed his functions, reiterates that the presence of both the opposition and the majority in the same government cabinet “is an exception not a rule”, he does this to, on one hand, remind of his previous stance, which agrees with democratic norms in any country that respects the will of its voters, and also to point to the “exceptional” circumstances that have imposed forming such a government, and that have brought together all the internal and regional contradictions available within it around one table… hopefully!! In short, the crisis of the March 14 Alliance was that of the struggle between those who wagered on the “weapon of democracy” in the face of the weapons of those who consider that the role ascribed to them, internally and at the border, exceeds democratic considerations, and who find nothing to prevent obstructing them if need be. In this confrontation, the weapons of the de facto situation have triumphed… and it was inevitable for the momentum of the March 14 Alliance to recede… whether Walid Jumblatt and the Kataeb (Phalange) Party remained in it or left.
