The Downfalling of a Country Charles Elias Chartouni/July 21/2021 شارل الياس شرتوني/انهيار لبنان
The perpetuating ministerial crisis is no oddity in our country, since it reflects an enduring pattern of institutional voids replicated throughout the last six decades. The lack of consensus over sovereignty matters has become a permanent feature which hobbles the functioning of institutions, and makes them pliable to the interests of domestic and foreign political brokers and the sway of regional politics, and opens up the way to oligarchic entrenchments. The latest political stalemate which succeeded the August 4th 2020 terrorist attack has yielded 11 months of political obstructionism, obtrusive malevolence and bitter animosities, and total disregard for the cumulative financial and socio-economic problems and their destructive consequences. Far from being accidental the unreeling events display the final episodes of a long decaying process which has run its course over the last six decades, and displayed the infirmities of a defrauded political entity. What we are witnessing at this juncture is the reiteration of institutional crises actuated throughout the 1958,1975,1990 and 2005 conflictual episodes and their incidence on the very functioning of political institutions, relegated to instrumentalization and redundancy by subservive power politics.
Lebanese institutions were progressively downgraded and made ancillaries to the destructive sway of regional power politics, lost their regulatory role to the adjudications of domestic and regional power contenders, and paved the way to oligarchic logrolling and the debilitation of democratic institutions and political culture. The asymmetries between the eviscerated political institutions and the dynamics of Realpolitik attest to the systemic breakdowns of a political system and a dysfunctional Nation-State, Lebanon has mutated into a political wasteland where political institutions and their underlying normative consensuses have dissipated, and the country is left adrift to the destructive impact of power relationships.
The harshness of the latest conflictual episode leaves us with corrosive uncertainties concerning the future of a political entity experiencing over and over its delegitimization, the deliberate sabotaging of its institutions, and the plundering of its resources by domestic actors pursuing their personal interests and sectarian strategies in coalition with coopted regional political and economic actors. The Shiite and Sunnite power elites and their enlisted coalition partners among Christian political actors, have willingly destroyed the institutional game to give way to their rise to power, cater to their oligarchic and sectarian interests which have systematically mapped the public domain, and proceeded into the de facto unraveling of the Nation-State and democratic institutions, and put at stake the future of civil concord, in a country made fragile by premeditated subversion politics operating on the interfaces of a tattering and threadbare sovereignty. The adumbrated sociological outlines help us define the coordinates and span of the ongoing crisis.
-The conjunction of the financial crisis, oligarchic entrenchments and the extraterritoriality of Shiite power politics have precluded the legal and democratic arbitration process from taking place, and the different political and financial actors found it expedient to pursue the weakening of State institutions and transform them into appendages to serve power games, financial interests, and long term strategic objectives. The all encompassing oligarchic canopy is interested in perpetuating the crisis, disrupting legal processes at various ends, forestalling international arbitrations and maintaining the de facto control over political levers.
The ineptitude and subservience of the nominal Diab government have prevented negotiations with the IMF from taking full course, forensic audit and recourse to Lebanese and international Justice from taking place, and the reform of the banking sector in relationship with the economy and the public sector (through merger and acquistions, recapitalization, reformation of the Central Bank, reviewing the cash and credit regulations, retrieval of depositors money, Dollarization or/and stabilization of the Lebanese currency, redemption of depositors accounts, streamlining and downsizing an overbloated clientelistic sector and redundant public administration, reviewing public spending policies and rescaling priorities, cutting down on corruption, public mismanagement, clientelism, oligarchic prebends and the overall patrimonialization of State institutions, redefining the boundaries of the private and public sectors based on the evaluation of State assets, nomothetic idiosyncrasies and governance regimes, and setting of ethical and legal standards, i.e. conflict of interests, shaming politics and public trials,… ).
The professional failures of the Diab cabinet, owed to its moral and political subservience, inexperienced incumbents, and pliability to oligarchic mentors, was relayed by the Hariri interlude and his inability to form a cabinet, mainly due to his murky positioning, lack of a road map, idle juggling, oligarchic interests, checkmating of Shiite power politics and overall immaturity, seem to accommodate the kaiser game of the ruling coalition. I wonder whether Shiite power politics are intent on accommodation and whether it’s in their interest to facilitate the formation of a cabinet assigned with the resolution of dire financial and socio-economic problems, the jump-starting of the economic engines, and the overall normalization of life in Lebanon.
-The proto-nuclear explosion of last August 4th 2020, the string of political assassinations and their immediate political antecedents, the hovering terror which poisons the daily lives of Lebanese have an unmistakable address, Hezbollah and its associates. The symptomatic nature of the terrorist attack is quite indicative of Hezbollah’s strategy, diligent subversive action and determination to change the political, urban, socio-economic, demographic and geopolitical dynamics. This Shiite fascist coalition is hell bent on destroying Lebanon, as it has overtly stated through its ideological mouthpieces (preachers in the Husayniyat), political statements, and the doxa disseminated throughout its communal environment, the faked real estate litigations in the Bekaa, Kesrouan and Jbeil, the politics of “divide and rule”attempted within the Christian, Sunnite and Druze communities.
The delegitimization discourse of the Lebanese National entity is part of a broader Iranian destabilization strategy aimed at reshuffling the strategic landscape in Lebanon and the Near East, where Hezbollah plays the role of the coordinator of Shiite political subversion, and aims at transforming Lebanon into its operational platform. The political obstructionism displayed throughout the last two years, and the manifold foreclosures set all long the Lebanese political spectrum are mounted to serve its sabotaging strategy.
Michel Aoun’s puppet presidency and his political movement, Hassan Diab’s burlesque coalition, and a broad array of political hacks and journalists (Nasser Qandil, We’am Wahhab, Abdel Rahim Mrad, Faysal Karameh, Talal Arslan, Emile Rahme, Jean Aziz, Salem Zahran, Scarlett Haddad, Karim Pakradouni….) are hired to advocate and conceal the subtexts of a subversion strategy.
The chances of a “mission cabinet” advocated by President Macron turned out to be a self fulfilling prophesy and is unlikely to materialize, unless Lebanese political dynamics succeed breaking the Hezbollah-oligarchic shackles, civil society and independent political actors meet under the UN Chapter Seven umbrella to form a transition cabinet to address the vital issues of a dying country, and set the course for a new national agreement to mend the rifts of a deeply fractured polity, revamp its political institutions, enforce international resolutions (1559, 1680, 1701), and close the gap between norms and facts. Otherwise, the road to hell is already paved and Lebanon is well set to join the growing stretches of Arab wastelands.
