a prominent myth.
It is not at all uncommon to claim that everybody in Lebanon has blood on their hands, and thus there is no point in commenting on the bloody history of certain personas. However, it must be emphasized that such a statement is fallacious. Do you have blood on your hands?Moreover, do ALL politicians have blood on their hands? The answer is no. And yet we have succeeded in limiting the political arena to a minimal set of those who not only had the bloodiest history, but more importantly have a failed PRESENT in governance (and please, don't blame that on Syria). Now it happens that these personas also have large gatherings (which is not a random coincidence), but does that imply those who don't identify with such groupings apathetically accept these warlords?
However, let's assume that it is true: everybody of importance has blood on their hands. Does it necessarily mean that they should not be held accountable? Maybe, but according to such logic, there is no need to counter other failings of the Lebanese state, such as the extreme levels of corruption, simply because ALL of those involved in the past 15 years were corrupt and embezzled millions (the current 40 billion dollar debt wasn't accumulated through constructive projects). These claims, and this attempt to not "punish," set a precedent for the future, and will lead to a failed state; it isn't only the existence of Hezbollah's arms that will be responsible for this. Accountability, a drive against corruption, and the development of a judicial system are fundamental building blocks of a sustainable state (the term "strong state" is just too amorphous to use constructively), and not vice versa. It would bode well if Lebanese citizens did not just accept the current status quo simply because "everyone was involved." Something has to break this cycle; acceptance will just eternalize it.
posted by Lazarus, 10:18 AM
3 Comments:
You make a great point Lazarus. I have thought about that a little bit previously, but I keep coming up against some annoying conclusions. There are quite a few politicians without any blood on their hands in Lebanon. Some of them have followings that are at best minor, but not negligible. The problem that they are up against, is that they have no chance of success in elections unless they ally themselves with other larger groups. Unfortunately, most (not to say all) of these larger groups have one form of (crap) on their hands or another. They are either warlords, corrupt, previously tried and failed politicians, or all of the above. And yet the people choose them time and time again for largely sectarian (fear of the other) reasons. The smaller groups are thus faced with either allying themselves with such a group and possibly succeeding, or not and either failing or being marginal. Add to that, the big sectarian groupings tend to have more money, control of state institutions, and monopolize (amongst themselves) the media. Its a really tough situation. I feel that we have found a way in Lebanon to stop the flow of time in a sense. Somehow our politicians, and people, have come up with a way to "successfully" merge a form of feudalism with a modern facade of a state - with disastrous consequences.
I think we need the middle and upper middle classes in Lebanon (who have some power and income), to start getting more involved in politics. Now, I am not a huge fan of the type of politics that that particular gruping generates, bt it beats the hell out of tribo-secto-feudal fear driven politics. How dowe do that ? I am not so sure given that those classes have managed to leach themselves onto the existing leadership....
By
R, at 11:40 AM
Certainly one of my favorite subjects here. But I disagree with you regarding what we can hope to get from honest politicians.
What we need is a robust civil society and a good broom. There is very little to salvage from the current political class (criminals and saints).
Regarding r's comment, I have been hearing more lately about having "business interests" take the lead. But this has already been done under Hariri. As you point out, the result was 45 billion dollars in debt and very little to show for it.
By
Ms Levantine, at 1:06 PM
the term "honest politician" is an oxymoron :)
i agree that a robust civil society is required, but how would that be developed? there seems to be a conflict between grassroot initiatives demanding change and the current institutional structure. however, i do need to give that more thought.
btw, do you have a broom large enough for the job?
i'm not sure how productive having technocrats would be; i don't have much evidence to comment on. however, the accumulation of the debt (among other issues) was partly a result of the lack of checks and balances within the system (which in turn results from a weak judicial system), and there is a large probability that technocrats would not deal with those issues. who knows.
By
Lazarus, at 2:53 PM
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