ELECTIONS BEFORE OR AFTER?

 Dr. Karam you say:“In a democracy, Presidential and Parliamentary elections are non negotiable. Try to explain this to Lebanese politicians?” 

Dr. Karam, in the absolute, you are 100% right, and 90% of the people in Lebanon support you there. They believe that the presidential and the parliamentary elections must be held, AT ALL COSTS, if we want to remain a democracy.
Sorry, but I disagree there. Holding elections under the present conditions, would be tantamount to holding fake elections, the way we have always proceeded for the past seventy years since our independence. Let me explain.
WHY ARE WE HOLDING THESE TWO ELECTIONS FOR? Nobody really knows. All they know is that we must go through the “so called democratic charade” knowing full well that the entire process is a fake from beginning to end.

Let me explain. In the case of the Presidential elections, everybody in Lebanon or nearly everybody, says that they need a “STRONG” president. But they cannot describe what a strong President is supposed to be. Is his strength measured by the size of his biceps or is it by the length of his kalachnikof ? Furthermore, why should it necessarily be a man, anyway, and not a woman? In fact I know one woman who would be the best President this country has ever had, bar President Chehab, were it not for the half baked Taif accords.

The fact is that we do not necessarily need a STRONG President. What we really need is a President who holds a “strong” VISION and a “strong” CONSCIOUSNESS of what Lebanon really NEEDS in these difficult times.
What we really need, dr. Karam, is to realize that we have been walking on the wrong path for the past twenty years, ever since the civil war ended “ARTIFICIALLY” in our country. And I know fully well what I mean by the term “ARTIFICIALLY”.

The Civil war was ended in fact through a compromise. At that time, the militias, all the militias, were holding super powers and super means. They were all controlling their own sea ports, levying their own duties, and financing their own private armies. Some of them were even dreaming of having their own airports. Then along came a decision, probably inspired from the outside, that Lebanon should remain a democracy in a Middle East where autocracy was generally the norm. They were told to give up all these advantages. But they had to be compensated for such “sacrifices”. That is where the “DEAL” was brought in. In exchange for giving up arms and “advantages” they were compensated in several ways. Their supporters were provided with “jobs” in the public administration that were granted to them irrespective of their qualifications, diplomas, or aptness. Twenty years later the country is still suffering from such a “deal” with a plethora of unqualified and often corrupt civil servants in most ministries. Their leaders, on the other hand, were promised juicy public contracts to compensate them for the loss of the port privileges that they had to give up.

Most of the militia leaders agreed to these terms with the exception of Hezbollah who refused to give up their arms and the territory that they controlled, with the results that we are witnessing today.
So, now that we have explained what really happened in Lebanon when it was decided to end the Civil war, I believe that the time has come for a deep introspection and consideration of where we stand TODAY and what we are supposed to do TOMORROW.

The fake “DEMOCRACY” that we adopted and that was based on fake “DEALS” must be shed and exchanged for the true one. That fake “DEMOCRACY” has built us a public debt of seventy billion dollars and has corrupted not only the militia leaders and their “entourages” but a large part of the population as well.

It is now high time to reverse course, otherwise we are all in for a catastrophe that will not only affect the needy and the “so-called” remaining middle class but also the rich and the powerful as well. The real estate bubble will inevitably explode, the banks will follow, because they put all their eggs in the State’s basket, and the status quo that has been artificially held so far will go the same way, unless a leader emerges to make people realize that we are all going on the wrong path.That man, or woman, should be the President we unconsciously want and certainly need. A President with a vision, a President with the patience and the skill to handle that bunch of unruly and blind politicians who believe that they ”know it all” when, in fact, they know NOTHING.

But the President cannot singlehandedly reverse course unless he has the indefectible support of the true representatives of the people. That is why true democratic parliamentary elections must be held that should be the result of a clear choice made by voters who are fully aware of the challenges facing them and the Nation and the hard decisions that must be taken to overcome all the dangers and the obstacles lying ahead. That is why programs must be drawn up specifying what the goals are and what must be concretely done in order to reach them. http://www.a-planned-development.blogspot.com