Lebanon: A Constitutional Settlement?
August 11, 2020, 7:12 am

James Denseiow

Whilst many observers felt that Lebanon’s economic and politic crisis was heading to a boiling point, few would have surely predicted that it would have been so massively exposed by a blast one tenth the size of the Hiroshima bomb, that has damaged half the city, killed almost two hundred people and wounded thousands.

Suddenly Lebanon is back on the front pages but this time it was an assassination or a regional act of war but seemingly bureaucratic incompetence and corruption that has led to such seismic loss. Unsurprisingly within a week the Government had resigned after protests again took to Beirut’s streets, but this time were able to even take over Ministries.

Yet a Lebanese Government resigning is not a rare incident and as the departing Prime Minister Diab bemoaned; corruption in Lebanon was "bigger than the state" itself, and "a very thick and thorny wall separates us from change; a wall fortified by a class that is resorting to all dirty methods in order to resist and preserve its gains."

If Lebanon is not a failed state it is certainly a hybrid state where sub-national and supra-national powers have a greater sovereignty in the real sense than the government itself. The end of the country’s long and devastating civil war was recognised as a balance of forces and compromises both inside and outside the country. The National Pact gave an official constitution and unofficial and unwritten set of instructions that saw the State as a pie to be divided up by the patronage of the country’s different sects.

The dysfunction of this way of governing a country was disguised somewhat by the importance of Lebanon as a playground for regional interests. Large sums of money from Iran and the Gulf poured into various political parties and organisations. The Lebanese diaspora, meanwhile, with a population larger than that of the country itself was another critical economic lifeline to sustain the unsustainable.

Whilst COVID has slowed remittances and the Syrian war and sanctions has squeezed Lebanon’s economy, the realignment of regional power has seen a rise of Iranian influence and declining Gulf influence. Back in 2016 Saudi Arabia urged all its citizens to leave Lebanon and halted aid to the country due to "hostile Lebanese positions resulting from the stranglehold of Hezbollah on the state".

A state of perhaps constructive tension has been replaced by endemic instability all exposed by the blast at the Port of Beirut that left the world asking what next? Over in Syria despite the conflict about to mark a decade of carnage, a new round of United Nation’s constitutional committee talks are scheduled for August 24 in Geneva. Senior UN officials believe that it is in updating the DNA of the country, through its constitution, that a path for a peaceful future may be forged.

It begs the question if one Lebanese Government falls to be replaced by another that has the same underpinning issues, what will have changed? Very little I’d imagine but then the question is do the vested powers and traditional elites in Lebanon accept the need for radical over cosmetic change? Will they, for example, seriously engage in discussions to review and renew the country’s constitution, is there appetite and resilience in the country for a serious look at de-confessionalising the country’s politics to turn the Ministries of the Government from prize assets to be win to drivers of essential change that the country needs to be a better place for its citizens. Or, as some argue, is sectarianism is the only system for Lebanon but can it be done in a better way?

Fundamentally what any discussion around these incredibly contentious and potentially dangerous topics needs, are that the actors who currently hold power be willing to cede some or all of what they have for a larger vision of what the country can become. Some external observers may be amazed that the alternative is possible, that vested interests can oversee half of the nation’s capital city getting blown up and still remain in power.

Yet to the east of Lebanon President Assad remains the figurehead of a country that has seen half its population displaced. Put simply, brutal incompetency is not enough to guarantee a change in the political DNA of a country. Vision and visionaries are what Lebanon needs now, both those without power and perhaps more importantly amongst those currently with it.

by : jamse danselow

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