Tag Archives: opposition

Lebanon’s New Government

Congrats fellow Lebanese who might read this, we now have a government.
Regardless of its unipolitical color and the 5 month labor it went through to get here, we can now say that we are no longer governmentless.

And since 5 months without government render you immune to the overall uselessness of the whole process, let’s all deem the government formation a big fat fail.

1) It is a one-sided government, meaning the political struggle between both sides in the country was irrelevant to its formation.

2) It took 5 months for people among the same “team” to agree on forming the cabinet. 5 months for them to agree on 30 names. It took less to form the government with both sides included after the 2009 parliamentary elections.

3) The former opposition calls upon itself reform and change. Change is there: I’ve never heard some of those names before. And congrats to those new ministers. They will have a constant monthly paycheck till the day they die. Also, congrats to those people that made the governmental selection yet again. I mean, could you imagine a government without Ghazi Aridi as the minister of public works? Hello no! Reform, indeed.

4) There are more pro-Syria ministers in the new Lebanese cabinet than there will be in the theoretical Syrian government to be formed by Bashar Assad in Syria.

5) A few hours after the announcement of this glorious formation, two ministers have already submitted their resignations. Were they not aware they were going to be assigned? Apparently not. What’s the word (or acronym) to say here? Yes, LOL! Quoting my friend Boulos, “civil war cabinets have lasted more than this!”

It’s getting bigger. The fail is getting bigger.

So yeah, let us be happy today that the orange, yellow, green and other irrelevant people found it in them to stop the cockfight and form a government. Useless as it is and contradictory as it may be to the will of the people, we now have one. Insert fireworks show.

Governmentless in Lebanon

The words Lebanon and No Government have become sort of synonyms. We haven’t set the standards yet in time without government but I believe we’re very close, if not yet over the threshold, to being without government the most often.

The long stretches of us not having a government for the past two years has been understandable. In a country like Lebanon where each politician and party want to secure a piece of the pie, power struggle was the key reason why the country remained functioning on the bare necessities for long periods of time.

However, this time around, there is no power struggle when it comes to government formation. The majority at the time is now a minority in parliament and, unlike the minority at the time, have decided not to participate and be a true opposition.

So the key hurdle is within the former opposition, current majority.

Let us rewind a little.

Continue reading →

Dear Hezbollah, I Am Not Israeli

While going back to my hometown today, I was surprised to see counter ads to the ones spread by the March 14 forces.

This is a picture I found online of one of those ads:

For those who can’t read Arabic, this reads as:

[The people want our arms surrendered]

And Israel wants our arms surrendered as well

The Islamic Resistance

The apparent meaning of this is quite clear: They want to make people notice that Lebanon’s mortal enemy *gasp* is supportive of the agenda that the protest on Sunday is adopting.

But if you think a little deeper about it, this is Hezbollah’s way of inferring that Israel might be behind this movement.

I hate to break Hezbollah’s bubble again, but Lebanese people wanting its arms to be surrendered sometimes goes beyond Israel’s existent wishes. Sure, Hezbollah being weaponless is inside Israel’s wishing scope, but the Lebanese people have gotten fed up with Hezbollah flaunting its arms left and right. This is a case of: If you got it, DO NOT flaunt it.

In addition to that, Hezbollah is also launching a counter-campaign on Facebook titled: “Mbala”, which is Lebanese for “Yes”. Yes for what? Let us see.

According to Hezbollah, we’re supposed to go down to the streets to support it and say yes to its arms because these arms have:

– returned our pride and glory,

– have liberated our land,

– have protected our families and us.

I would have gladly given those three points to them without even thinking twice about it had the date been March 11th 2001, a few months after South Lebanon was liberated from Israeli forces. However, 10 years later, where do we stand from this?

– Because of Hezbollah’s arms, I had to stay home for two weeks in 2008 because they decided to go into a near-civil strife rampage in Beirut, just because they felt like it.

– Because of Hezbollah, my family’s vote in the last parliamentary elections, against it and its allies, has basically been equated with junk. Why’s that? Because they decided on one Tuesday to send out its personnel, dressed out in black to the streets of Beirut, reminding everyone of the aforementioned point, basically telling everyone that we can do whatever we want whenever we want and there’s nothing you can do about it.

– Because of Hezbollah, our economic boom that started in late 2005 got reversed into a severe economic breakdown when Hezbollah iniated the 2006 war against Israel. Yes, Hezbollah was the main cause of that war and hiding from this fact will not change it.

So how did you, dear Hezbollah, protect me and my family since 2001? Against a war that you initiated? It was your obligation after all. Did you return my pride when you paraded around my university campus with your allies killing people left and right just because those people you killed decided to oppose you? And what land did you liberate since 2001? And do you honestly think you could have even liberated South Lebanon if Israel hadn’t been pushed into implementing U.N. Resolution 425?

As far as I’m concerned, all of this boils down to you and your arms becoming more or less useless. It’s the harsh truth, but it needs to be said. And you want people to come down on March 20th to support you? Is this your way of retaliating to those whose only reason of going down to the streets in 2 days is you attempting to suppress their voices?

Yes, we are going on March 13th. And if I hadn’t been 100% convinced, I am more than convinced now. Why’s that? Because the amount of hypocrisy in this country has become unsupportable and Hezbollah wears the hypocritical mantle with the best possible fashion.

They equate you with being a traitor or an Israeli-supporter whenever they feel threatened. And they’re a bunch of tyrants as much as Israel is. So to them we say, we are not Israelis. We are pure Lebanese, whose minds are only for Lebanon.

So on March 13th, let us all go down as a testimony of our belief that Lebanon will never prosper under a mandate of unlawful arms is unacceptable. Martyr’s Square will be our testimony on Sunday

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