Hezbollah and Friends: A Cancerous Growth Choking the Lebanese State

“Resistance is futile”, so say the fictional villains from the Star Trek universe, The Borg. In Lebanon, resisting the so-called resistance, Hezbollah, is far from futile, it is in fact what I consider a national duty. This cancerous growth has long hidden behind the noble cause of liberating occupied Lebanese territory and defending Lebanon against Israeli aggression to amass quite an arsenal of sophisticated and highly destructive weapons as well as a well trained and experienced soldiery that fought in the futile battles of Syria and Yemen, or so we hear. 

 

The alliance of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement have unashamedly and intentionally scuttled any hope of electing a new president for the republic any time soon, an election that is a vital first step along the long and torturous road of reform and recovery. They insist on getting their way or nothing moves forward, they are holding the whole country hostage to their whims and paranoid fears because for the first time in a long time the party of God, known affectionately here as the “Hezb”, feels rather naked and uncovered, in the political sense of course. 

A country worth fighting for!

The linchpin of the Hezb’s local political success has long been their strong alliance with the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) a one-time powerful political party that in the 2022 parliamentary elections lost significant ground to its prime competitor, the Lebanese Forces.

 

The FPM leadership under MP Gebran Bassil is understandably sore at the failure of the six-year tenure of their founder as president. Michel Aoun’s term in office was marked by financial and economic collapse, the collapse of state institutions and basic public services and total obstruction to most FPM proposed legislation from a man who swore to ensure Aoun’s tenure would be a failure, the Hezb’s ally, Parliament Speaker and Amal Movement chief Nabih Berri, or so we hear. I add a qualifier at the end because we really do not know what goes on in our own political system and between rivals and allies, ours is a highly opaque political system. A  system that is the perfect breeding ground for corruption and the training of corrupt minions.

 

There is no doubt that failure to agree on and elect a new president is a loss to all the Lebanese, and the very fact that adversaries and allies need to agree on a candidate first before walking into parliament to elect him/her, is a tragic aspect of our maddening political system. Neither side can on their own elect a president. The Shiite Duo and their allies can no more elect Franjieh than the opposition to the duo can elect their candidate of the moment. This time it was Jihad Azour, tomorrow, who knows? This facts show that: one, the Hezb and Co. do not have a second candidate to submit, their one and only candidate is Suleiman Franjieh, not a strength politically speaking but a weakness. 

 

So no wonder the Hezb’s “sincere” call for dialogue rings hollow. Dialogue over what, over what kind of dictatorship the Hezb will impose on the Lebanese?! The choice is simple, the locals are told, you either accept Franjieh or there will be no president. That ultimatum in my book is a mortal threat to the very existence of Lebanon as it stands today, a homeland for all its citizens no matter their sect or regional, tribal or political affiliations. This position the Hezb can afford to take simply because they are in no hurry. They were not affected by the collapse of the banking sector since most of their funds come from the drugs or illegal diamond trade funneled into the country and out of it via shady means in cash. 

 

To suggest that we elect a president from the March 8 bloc is to suggest shooting ourselves in the foot. The last prime minister supported by the Hezb and March 8 MPs was Hassan Diab, a man who had arguably more resources at his disposal to ease the Lebanese’s suffering than our current prime minister. Diab, an academic and former minister, took the heart breaking decisions for Lebanon to default on its Eurobonds, he also took the fateful decision to turn the clock back a hundred years and give communism a try! His government decided the best way to use the roughly $30 billion in central bank foreign currency reserves at the time in early 2020, was to spend it subsidizing basic commodities, fuel, medicine, food, bringing prices down on the one hand but also ensuring chronic scarcity as importers and wholesalers made a killing selling subsidized goods abroad! 

 

All this was at the expense of depositors. Had the March 8 Diab government been living in the real world they would have spent those funds more wisely than they ended up doing. For one thing, all depositors could have been paid in full, in cash up to $100,000 each, and not paid in installments over time. This would have solved much of the financial and social issues that we are stuck with today. People would have had some breathing space, some cash to pay for basic necessities, they wouldn’t have had to send their children to work abroad in such huge numbers so they can keep their parents alive. People would have had the means to eventually get back up on their own two feet, many businesses would have managed to struggle on and eventually recover instead of folding when their liquidity suddenly dried up. The whole country would have been in a far better state than it is in now. Diab was Lebanon’s worst prime minister and now they want to elect an even worse president!

 

Well, I say enough is enough. I have had it living under this dictatorship of bullies who clothe themselves in saintly garbs but conceal beneath their cloak the sharp serpent’s fangs always ready to inject their divisive venom into the minds of the simple and easily fooled masses.

 

Resistance to these devils isn’t futile, its necessary.