I was being driven through the Danish countryside last weekend when my host asked me if Lebanon really was as beautiful as he had been led to believe.
I could have just said yes and left it at that but being in one of the most socially advanced nations in the world, I felt I was under oath and so I told him about our much published rubbish problem. “Oh”, he said. “I hadn’t heard.”
Well I told him. I told him about the Lebanese government’s laughable attempts to hide 20,000 tonnes of the uncollected refuse in remote, often scenic, parts of the country and how we still have no comprehensive national commitment to recycling. “We wanted to sell our trash to your neighbours in Sweden who apparently need the stuff to generate power but we can’t because it’s not sorted properly.”
He thought about this. “We also use trash to generate power, he said executing a typically efficient Nordic lane change, cruising past a sluggish caravan. “We’ve been doing it for 45 years, actually. First it was heating and for the last 25 years we have been generating electricity,” he said, “We’re currently building a new waste processing plant in Copenhagen on the island of Amager. It will process 420,000 tonnes of waste a year providing power to over 140,000 households. It will have a ski slope on the top and a rock climbing facility on the side. The Lebanese should have one.”
Well, yes, we should but I pointed out that the government was too busy discussing retirement options for the surplus of generals in the army and that if we were not careful we would soon have more than Nato. He thought I was joking.
But of course he had a point. By my calculations, Beirut produces roughly 1 million tonnes of rubbish a year, enough to deliver power to 350,000 homes. My host and I sat in silence before he spoke. “So they just dump it in the forests?” I nodded. “So some parts are not so beautiful?” I shook my head. “No, not really.”
The conversation turned to the UK, where, if the opinion polls are to be believed, Jeremy Corbyn, an old school socialist MP, looks set to become leader of the British Labour party next month. That said, Mr Corbyn’s economic vision, which advocates a return to the old Labour values of state ownership and will also no doubt advocate increased public spending, will in all probability make his party unelectable for years, perhaps even decades, to come.
I told my host that as a Lebanese I look at Mr Corbyn’s progress and marvel at the British system. Not only has it given a new lease of life to a political outsider, the very fact that he is standing, and as I write winning, indicates that the political barometer is quick to reflect the mood of the country, a country where political parties can be decimated at the polls for not delivering, or failing to convince.
He gave me a funny look. “This is normal though, no?”
Not quite. I explained that Lebanon, for example, has an economy in spite of, rather than because of, its system – one that is made up of a political class that feels it have a divine right to power despite delivering zero prosperity.
Many would argue that Lebanon’s consensual system is what has often saved the country from imploding, but the business class will happily confirm that historically it has had to go it alone.
The governor of the central bank makes sure the country doesn’t go broke by husbanding its gold and foreign currency reserves but that’s about it as far as policy goes.
The only clear economic road map in the last 25 years was implemented by the late Rafiq Hariri, the billionaire businessman turned politician, who rebuilt the bombed out downtown Beirut as a “build-it-and-they-will-come” tourist hub. He was, if you want, Lebanon’s Margaret Thatcher, but when in 2005 he was murdered in front of the Hotel St Georges, the country fell back into its regular rhythm of being managed by the usual suspects of ageing warlords and feudal worthies.
Another funny look. “And the people accept this?” I nodded, and we drove on through the pristine countryside in silence.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.
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