By Hadi Khatib
Lebanonwire staff

Hollywood producers couldn’t have crafted a better scenario for what took place Thursday in Lebanon, with Oscar winning performances by ministers, MPs and the president who took turns going over a well scripted horror movie with ‘forbidden sins’ from the political variety, ‘machete’ lines that included death threats, decapitation and removal of limbs.

The image of politicians all smiles, laughing and joking around the Beirut roundtable national talks that earned them the praise from the international community was replaced by savage scenes under the lens of cameras for the whole world to see.

It all started inauspiciously enough when Future Movement leader Saad Hariri announced from Egypt that the long-running political deadlock on the presidency was close to being resolved.

"Solutions have actually been found to certain issues and there will soon be a solution to the issue of the Lebanese presidency," Hariri told reporters in Cairo after meeting Egyptian President Husni Mubaraq

Later in Parliament, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora tried to explain his public dispute with President Emile Lahoud over a draft resolution in the final wording of the Khartoum Arab Summit last Tuesday.

The argument between Siniora and Lahoud in Khartoum erupted after Siniora, who took part in the meeting without sitting in the Lebanese delegation headed by Lahoud, demanded the removal of a clause pledging support to the armed “Lebanese resistance”.

Lahoud protested Siniora's request leading to a vocal dispute between the two leaders.

The televised speech in Parliament saw Speaker Nabih Berri calling Siniora’s actions as “bordering a sin.”

“You were wrong to attend the summit on a different delegation from Lahoud’s, wrong to assume that you could change the ‘Cabinet Declaration’ on which basis you were elected and wrong to assume that the resistance is an issue on the table, knowing that we have already agreed that only the arms are under discussion within the framework of strategically defending Lebanon,” Berri told Siniora.

Berri said that following the national dialogue agreement on the legitimacy of Hezbollah he had announced “the resistance is staying, staying, staying.”

Berri followed his speech with a hammer blow indicating the conclusion of the parliament session without giving Siniora or any other MP the chance to reply.

In a later interview with Tele-Liban television, a calmer Berri said that we need to pick up the pieces and move towards completing the national dialogue.

“I was clear (in parliament) and Siniora should have apologized for his blunder at the summit,” Berri told Tele-Liban.

Sources close to the premier told An-Nahar that “Berri’s comment came as a reaction to Lahoud’s acrobatics and self claims of heroism at the summit where the president was trying to score personal points at the expense of the Lebanese unity.”

“The only way forward is through dialogue; what Berri said was unacceptable since he broke the protocol between constitutional institutions by giving moral instructions to the premier at a time when Siniora does not need patriotic lessons from anyone, and we regret that Lahoud’s propaganda campaign was accepted literally without closer inspection,” the sources told An-Nahar.

The action packed motion picture reached epic proportions later in the Cabinet session when the camera lens caught sight f a wild and violent verbal exchange between Lahoud and each of Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamade and Deputy Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat in a show worthy of a new “political reality program.”

“We represent the majority and Siniora was our representative at the summit. His position was the legitimate one, not yours,” Hamade told Lahoud at the start of the cabinet session.

Television footage showed Lahoud yelling at Hamade “you have no right to speak in front of cameramen. You are destroying the country. Are you here to shoot a movie?”

When Hamade continued talking ignoring Lahoud, the lens then carefully moved towards Fatfat who supported Hamade’s right to speak and drawing a threat from the president.

“I will turn you to crumbs,” Lahoud told Fatfat in an apparent play on words using the minister’s last name which if translated from Arabic means the same thing.

Daily Al-Mustaqbal said Lahoud lost his nerves when he addressed Fatfat and reported that the minister immediately filed a lawsuit against Lahoud claiming he threatened his life while also informing the lead investigator into the former premier Rafiq Hariri’s murder probe Serge Brammertz of the same.

Following the remarks, ministers from Lebanon's anti-Syrian parliamentary majority walked out of the cabinet meeting.

Fatfat told reporters outside the Cabinet building that Lahoud attacked him verbally during the session while Hamade said “the walkout does not threaten the government and will not affect the national dialogue process which resumes Monday.”

“We refuse to turn the clock back; the walkout is meant to protest what happened in Khartoum and to send a clear message to Lahoud and Syria that the Lebanese refuse Syrian hegemony in Lebanon," Hamade told reporters.

Hoards of reporters where also besieging Lahoud who was simultaneously saying “this so called majority is fictitious and they are no longer seeking the truth (the slogan used to find the culprits of Hariri’s murder); all they want is the head of the resistance.”

“This is a comedy, Arab leaders are more concerned about Lebanon than the Lebanese,” Lahoud said adding that his reply to Fatfat was just because “Fatfat insulted me.”

Siniora also spoke to reporters after a brief meeting with Shiite ministers who stayed behind in the Cabinet building saying “I reemphasize my position regarding the resistance which I had repeatedly admired its role.”

“We should stop taking personal credit for patriotism in this country, no one is more patriotic than the other,” Siniora said.

However the climax was yet to come, with Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s address at the ‘Fourth Conference for the Support of the Resistance’.

“If anyone tries to disarm the resistance, we will cut off his hand, head and remove his soul,” Nasrallah said.

In a televised interview with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBCi) during the weekly program “Kalam Al Nass”, Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat attacked Hezbollah saying “why is the resistance threatening to use its arms internally when it has always claimed they were pointed at the enemy Israel?”

Jumblat said that the failure to prove the Shebaa Farms’ Lebanese identity will lead to the failure of the Taif Accord, and the failure of the Lebanese authorities in reestablishing their sovereignty over the South and the Naameh (where pro-Syrian Palestinian Factions reside).”

“These failures mean that Syria’s hegemony will continue using its allies like Hezbollah and will eventually abort the ‘Beirut 1’ donor conference that would help pull the country out of its economic crisis,” Jumblat said during the interview.

Jumblat said that the characteristics of the new presidential candidate should follow a ‘road map’ and would only be acceptable from the ranks of the March 14th alliance, “which includes (Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel) Aoun.”

Ad-Diyar daily meanwhile quoted Western Diplomatic sources as saying “there is no change in the presidency nor in the government at this point in time.”

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