“The parliamentary majority”, suggests Farid el-Khazen, MP for Jbeil-Kesrwan and a member of the Bloc of Reform and Change, (Aounist), “is responsible for the crisis, since it was its refusal to comply with the request of the opposition that provoked the resignation of six members of the cabinet, five of whom come from the Shiite community, which is no longer represented.”

Then, the prime minister turned a deaf ear to the advice of the parliamentary speaker, who asked him not to devote a cabinet session to the study of the proposed international tribunal tasked with judging the series of assassination perpetrated in Lebanon since February 2005.

“It would have been preferable to delay the study of this project by some days in order to give to the members of Parliament the time to examine it thoroughly to make it as perfect as possible.

“Because of this fact, Speaker Berri lost his role as a mediator between the opposing parties, and this forced him to join the opposition.”

Some describe the Saniora cabinet as unconstitutional and illegal. Do you agree?

It is constitutional in the strictly formal sense, but on the practical level it is not representative since one of the major national communities is no longer part of it. This compromises the principle of coexistence and balance on the national level.

Is the objective of the opposition limited, as they claim, to setting up a government of national unity in order to draft a new electoral law?

The electoral law, as General Michel Aoun pointed out in his November 13 speech, is a fundamental issue and the government has not kept the promise it made to lay the text of the proposed new election law before Parliament within six months.