Grotto's undoubted beauty cannot disguise ugly truths

Voting for your nation's entry in the Seven Wonders of Nature competition should not be a moral obligation, especially in Lebanon, says Michael Karam.

Jeita Grotto consists of two huge watery caves filled with stalactites. AFP

We Lebanese can be a sentimental lot. Middle East Airlines passengers, for example, have a habit of clapping when they land at Rafik Hariri International Airport. This is often preceded by much cooing - mainly by returning expatriates - as the plane reaches the Lebanese coast and the Beirut traffic and city lights are suddenly visible below.

By the same token, a Lebanese man living abroad will become misty-eyed when his mother calls to say she is cooking his favourite meal, and he will wax lyrical to foreign friends about a village life often more taken from the pages of Amin Maalouf than reality.

Those of us who live in Lebanon tend to be a bit more cynical, but not much. While much of everyday life is spent railing at the political class (one that we are nonetheless happy to vote in again come election time), it doesn't take much to get us excited at any opportunity to put Lebanon on the world map, as many giant record-breaking plates of hummus and tabbouleh will testify.

Last weekend, my wife asked me if I had cast my vote, by sending an SMS, to have the Jeita Grotto listed as one of the world's Seven Wonders of Nature, a contest in which 28 similar, awe-inspiring landmarks - such as Bu Tinah island in Abu Dhabi - across the world were also competing.

Wikipedia tells us that the Jeita Grotto, about 20km north of Beirut, consists of two huge watery caves filled with stalactites (including the world's biggest) with an overall length of nearly 9km. A certain Reverend William Thomson discovered the lower cave in 1836, while the upper was found by a band of intrepid Lebanese cavers in 1958. Along with the Roman ruins at Baalbek, it is arguably Lebanon's best known attraction and a major contributor to the country's US$2.5 billion (Dh9.18bn) tourism industry

I have not been to Jeita, but I hear it is beautiful and spectacular, which is why I didn't spew my usual cynical bile at Mrs Karam's enthusiasm for lobbying. But what really got my goat was when later that day I heard that the prime minister, Najib Mikati, and the rest of our dubious political class, ably supported by the singers Wadih El Safi and Ragheb Alama and the former Miss Lebanon Rahaf Abdallah, had jumped on the Jeita bandwagon and were telling us that voting for Jeita was a "national duty".

Now, by and large, I can take Lebanon. One has one's bad days but one develops antibodies to the craziness that swamps a country in which the normal rules do not apply and where it takes a dollop of black humour to live with the corruption, the hypocrisy, the self-interest and the bald indifference to basic ethical, professional, legal and even environmental norms.

But Mr Mikati's solemn pronouncement was beyond the pale. Firstly, it was a bit rich for his government to suddenly take an interest in one of our natural landmarks when every day old houses are torn down for new high-rise apartments and the countryside is being eaten away by illegal quarries, rampant building and spoilt by unfettered rubbish dumping.

Secondly, I think that being told that voting for Jeita is an almost a moral obligation is the most insulting part of the whole hoopla. It is a bit hard to envisage what one's national duty is in a country where the words "nation" and "duty" are by and large anathema.

"But it will bring in about $1bn extra tourist dollars," said an Irish friend, who was also busy campaigning for the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland's top tourist attraction and another contender. The Irish, I find, have a natural affinity with the Lebanese, and his measured reading did momentarily make me think I was being a curmudgeon, but it was short-lived. It wasn't the promotion of Jeita that was offensive. It was being told that if I didn't vote for Jeita I was somehow failing as a Lebanese. Surely if I did my national duty and sent the Jeita SMS, then Mr Mikati, his cabinet and the rest of the Lebanese political class should be doing theirs.

Because, assuming on November 11, when the results are announced, Jeita makes the cut and we do generate a further $1bn, the tourists from whose pockets the extra revenue will come will be hugely underwhelmed by the rest of the country. We will still have shockingly bad infrastructure - dangerous roads, limited water, sporadic electricity - and still be blighted by a lack of transparency, a hamstrung legal system, no public transport to speak of, limited job opportunities, no economic idea about anything and still be burdened by Hizbollah's militia, an army that sits beyond the control of the state and is willing to drag us to Armageddon at the drop of a hat. I could list more, but that should be enough to be getting on with.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer and communication consultant based in Beirut