Why are Lebanese political powers so eager on wasting both time and opportunities, at a time where severe crises need quick solutions?
Many forces in the government agree that this government was made for elections. One of the politicians representing an “active” party says that “The government will not work for more than two months because elections will take place starting next February”. He reflects most of the active MP’s opinion, and says that this government should not be loaded the burden of managing any files, or being responsible for any change in administrative, economic, and social patterns.
If the government was formed this month, it would remain for around 200 days. Officials are expected to come up with direct reforms over around 100 days. These reforms are ought to help in implementing direct targets, along with paving the way to take steps in a more profound and influential way on the long run. On the other hand, we need all this time to implement these reforms, although we are at the time of elections, where each one is doing his/her own job, but there should not be any conflict between these two things.
So, this becomes the first government that was elected from an old/extended parliament. Also, who can predict that the next elections’ results will bring out a better parliament and government, especially if the law remained unchanged?
Six points have been put forth in this regard, around a month ago, and they perhaps constitute the 100 days project. However, nothing has changed until today, except wasting an entire month without applying measures, which are sorely-needed by the country. Throughout all this time, the government was spoken of only as a government that is supposed to perform the elections, as if it cannot perform another task at the same time.
As we wait for the white smoke for the expected formation of the government, there are economic or financial roles for the era, which should be secured, until identifying the potential benefit from them. Perhaps the most important of them is the monetary situation in the country and the consequences of the last financial engineering carried out by the Central Bank of Lebanon.
Despite the fact that a lobby including a group of banks dared, for the first time, to attack the Central Bank’s Governor Riad Salameh and to accuse him of bias or using hidden ways to protect the lira, and despite the silent campaign that accompanied the attack, and the words saying that there is a need to bring about a change in the governance site, the strengths brought about by the recent engineering should be utilized and built upon the monetary project, which has been ongoing for more than a quarter of a century, in order to start a clear, comprehensive economic project based on the huge volume of available funding, which was created due to the monetary project, which is the only form that erases the previous costs, and justifies previous choices, while putting them in a logical context, on the economic and development level. It also shows its great feasibility in comparison with the cost.
This requires, first and foremost, making sure not to drain this engineering, whether by delaying its conceptualization and application, or by not allowing the creation of an obscure atmosphere, which is related to the relationship between the era and the Central Bank of Lebanon, with its current governance, especially with the confusion raised by those who aspire for that role (and it is their right), or those who are negatively affected of the situation.
The current circumstances cannot bear any analyses, and such trends could be ended quickly and accurately, taking into account that Lebanon, which exists at a regional center of the biggest volcano in nearly a century, enjoys, relative unprecedented stability.
The size of quarrels is huge, and while some could be justified in the political game, others cannot in any way be justified. However, the size of the monetary, economic, and financial dangers is huge, but the recent positive presidential developments can quickly grasp them.
This, however, is not needed, but instead, what is required is the continuation of the presidential elections’ effects, until the ethical climate shifts to the beginning of concrete actions, which transform it to an effective, productive pathway.
The government’s procrastination or limiting the government’s role to elections only, as well as the continuation of obscurity on the monetary level, are both sensitive and serious issues threatening a certain context of the era, and an opportunity to put Lebanon on the path of reform. They also threaten the actual starting point for building a state, which the Lebanese have awaited for so long to build.
