472 Resisting Publics
of legislative elections based upon a more representative election law that
all Lebanese could agree upon, preferably one based on proportional rep-
resentation and small electoral districts.^49
e Ta’if Agreement had divided political power, according to a Th
quota system, evenly between Muslims and Christians, both in the cabi-
net and the parliament. The seats were then being further divided among
the various Muslim and Christian groups. Thus, the 128 seats in the leg-
islature were split 50-50 between Muslims and Christians, as were the 24
seats of the Sanyura cabinet, with Shi‘a given five of the 24. Even if all five
Shi‘i ministers resigned, the cabinet could still meet and make decisions
by a two-thirds majority vote. This representation definitely reflected nei-
ther Hizbullah’s demographic strength nor its political force.
n the legislature, Hizbullah had a parliamentary bloc of 14 members I
and, together with its allies, could count on 57 MPs^50 out of a total of 128.
In other words, the party controlled 44% of the parliament, which implied
that the Hizbullah-led opposition was entitled to more than thirteen of the
thirty ministers that would be potentially seated as a national unity cabinet.
Aiming at veto power, the Hizbullah-led opposition asked for eleven min-
isters. With the president, Emile Lahoud, and the speaker of parliament,
Nabih Berri, already on the side of the Hizbullah-led opposition (although
this is not to say that the opposition controlled the presidency and the par-
liament), all that was needed to become the most powerful force in the
Lebanese political system was to gain veto power in the cabinet.
n an interview on 31 October 2006 on al-Manar TVI , Nasrallah
gave the cabinet an ultimatum: one-week, starting from Monday 6
November, to form a national unity government in which Hizbullah
and its allies would wield one-third veto power. Otherwise, he threat-
ened, the Hizbullah-led opposition would take to the streets until the
cabinet yielded to their demands. Quoting John Stewart Mill’s concept
of the “tyranny of the majority,” al-Intiqad labeled Sanyura’s government
as tyrannical, claiming that it only had an “artificial” majority. In turn,
Sanyura replied that granting the Hizbullah-led opposition veto power in
the cabinet would amount to the “tyranny of the minority.”^51 Criticism of
Hizbullah also came from various sectors of the media as well as political
and religious circles. The Mufti of Mount Lebanon, Shaykh Muhammad
‘Ali al-Jusu, accused Nasrallah of fomenting Sunni-Shi‘i discord and of