I wonder if any Lebanese watching BBC or Sky News on their illegal satellite dish last Wednesday caught the UK chancellor Philip Hammond delivering the new-look Conservative government’s first autumn statement in which he outlined plans to tweak the UK’s economy in light of Brexit.
If they did, they will have heard Mr Hammond pledge a national productivity investment fund of £23 billion (Dh105.57bn) to be spent on infrastructure with a further £1bn earmarked to invest in full-fibre broadband and 5G networks. He promised a drop in corporation tax; an increase in the national living wage – from £7.20 to £7.50 per hour – and more help for first-time homebuyers.
I mention all this because, later that day John McDonnell, the opposition Labour Party’s “shadow” chancellor, responded to these measures by accusing the government of having “no vision”, that infrastructure investment had failed to deliver in the past and quite simply the “plan to reset economic policy [had been] betrayed”. The UK was, he said, “unprepared and ill-equipped to meet the challenges of Brexit and have a secure economy.”
“No vision,” eh? Mr McDonnell should come to Lebanon to see what “no vision” really means. Economically, we are groping in the dark.
It has been nearly a month since Saad Hariri was asked by the new president, Michel Aoun, to form a new administration and already there is an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Despite a 30-month hiatus with no president and no effective government, Mr Hariri still hasn’t named a cabinet because, with wearying predictability, there are arguments over how many portfolios will make up the new cabinet and who gets what job.
And this after Mr Aoun, in his inaugural address, pledged that Lebanon was open for business, and that the ills plaguing the country – water and electricity shortages being top of the list – would be swiftly addressed. The honeymoon is well and truly over.
And there is the small matter of the ministerial statement, which in theory should outline the political economic and social “vision” of any new government. The last one, issued by the supposed “salvation” government of Tammam Salam, made as its economic priority a pay rise for public sector workers, many of whom quite literally did, and still do, nothing. It also raised taxes on interest on customer deposits at Lebanese banks from 5 per cent to 15 per cent, and hiked taxes on profits from real estate transactions to 15 per cent – presumably to pay the civil servants. It then rather bizarrely promised to hire more civil servants and, as a sop to the poor old private sector, boost tourism.
This time around we are in a much worse situation than we were in two years ago, but instead of quietly rolling up its sleeves and getting to work covered in a sense of collective guilt and shame after leaving the country rudderless for over two years, the political class is once again in a lather over the statement’s wording of the role of the Resistance, or to put it more accurately, the role of Hizbollah’s private army, which has been one of, if not the, major obstacle to economic progress in recent years.
This didn’t stop Mr Aoun promising that the country would spare no effort to “liberate the remaining occupied Lebanese territories, and protect our country from an enemy that still covets our land, water and natural resources”.
Call me unpatriotic, but Lebanon, whose economy has been decimated by regional unrest, has more important priorities than the “liberation” of lands that may or may not even be Lebanese and to protect resources that it can hardly manage. To hide behind the threat of Israeli aggression is a cruel and cynical red herring. The brilliant Arab writer Mona Eltahawy called Israel “the opium of the people” used to create the “collective amnesia in the Middle East”. It can be applied with guided missile-like precision to describe how generations of Lebanese leaders have convinced their people to put their lives on hold because of a supposed higher struggle.
The British should be thankful they have a system of checks and balances manned by capable people who by and large are driven by a thirst for public service with a “vision” born out of genuine conviction. The Lebanese, on the other hand, still need to wake up to the fact they are still being conned.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.
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