by BY REBECCA COLLARD -- foreignpolicy.com -- Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is back by unpopular demand, pledging to do better this time (his fourth as premier) as Lebanon reels from its months of political paralysis, its worst financial crisis in decades, the coronavirus pandemic, and the aftermath of the deadly Aug. 4 explosion at the port of Beirut. On Thursday, a slim majority of the Lebanon’s members of parliament agreed to have Hariri return as prime minister-designate and form a new cabinet—which will be his first tough test. His return will not be welcomed by the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been in the streets in protest since last October, when they secured their biggest victory by forcing Hariri’s resignation. But after a year of dashed hopes, protesters are greeting his return with more despair than anger.

Wait, Hariri resigned a year ago in answer to the popular protests. How is his return supposed to be the solution to Lebanon’s problems, which have only gotten worse since then? Hariri is back as prime minister in large part because there’s not really anybody else whom Lebanon’s political parties would agree on. Hassan Diab, who succeeded Hariri last fall, resigned himself after the August explosion, which killed almost 200 people and was widely seen as the result of government incompetence and corruption. After him came Mustapha Adib, then (and now again) Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany. But he couldn’t form a new cabinet and stepped down as prime minister late last month.

The biggest cabinet hurdle was the post of finance minister, a powerful position, as financial signoff can influence the work of other ministries. Lebanon’s Shiite parties, Hezbollah and Amal, wanted the post, but there was resistance from other groups. Hariri is believed to be more likely to accommodate that demand—and indeed, while Hezbollah declined to nominate anyone for prime minister, it has said it won’t stand in the way of forming a new government. At the same time, though, Hariri has promised to assemble a cabinet of “nonpartisan specialists” with a “mission to implement the economic, financial and administrative reforms” the country desperately needs. Of course, that’s the same promise Adib and Diab made before him. Hariri is an old hand in Lebanon’s political game and more likely to accommodate the demands of the traditional political parties than Adib was, but success in forming a cabinet is not guaranteed. It will be a balancing act of political interests. The process could go on for months. If it’s unsuccessful, Lebanon could see its fourth prime minister in less than a year and more delays on its road to recovery.

But there must be other options, right? Other names were floated to head the next government, but the pool is limited. Under Lebanon’s sectarian political system, the prime minister has to be a Sunni Muslim, just as the president has to be a Christian and the speaker of the house a Shiite Muslim. Then, he has to be seen as acceptable to most of the sect-based political parties. Hariri’s own Future Movement, the Shiite Amal Movement, the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party all voted in favor of Hariri’s return, but the Free Patriotic Movement of President Michel Aoun and the Christian Lebanese Forces did not. In the end, Hariri passed with a slim majority—just 65 of the 128 seats.