" ... No reason to believe Hariri, ... with already a track record of failure, will succeed now..."

In the DailyStar, here

"President Michel Sleiman renamed Hariri prime minister-designate on Wednesday, after the Future Movement chief was tabbed by 73 of Parliament’s 128 deputies. Hariri had resigned the post on September 10 after fruitless cabinet talks lasting since June. “I don’t see a cabinet being formed any time soon,” he said. “I don’t see it on the horizon. There is no reason to believe [Hariri] will succeed now where he failed before. ......

The cabinet vacuum will persist also because Sleiman has not yet been able to live up to his frequent pledges to serve as a non-partisan figure capable of achieving consensus between rival factions, Hanna added. 

For his part, Hariri has been lengthening the odds of settling on a government by sounding a less conciliatory tone in his comments since resigning, although his first unsuccessful crack at cabinet formation has only left him in a less advantageous negotiating position, said (Habib) Malek.  “He’s weaker than he was the first time around, but he seems to be upping the ante with his rhetoric,” Malek added. “He hasn’t even started yet, and he has a track record of failure.” 

.........the deeper chasm preventing government formation might stem less from Hariri’s strength relative to Aoun and Bassil than from the historically continuous efforts by the country’s Maronites and Shiites – who make up the core of the March 8 alliance – to chip away at the power of Lebanon’s Sunnis, said Khashan. Since the declaration of Greater Lebanon in 1920 the Maronites and Shiites have cooperated against the Sunnis (what?)– .... “The issue is deeper than one portfolio here and another portfolio there. The issue is the office of the prime minister. This is the real issue.”