Saadeddine Hariri, prime minister of Lebanon
The words "Saad Hariri, prime minister" appear to be headed toward becoming a reality. Hariri must still be offered the post and accept it, but for now, a consensus exists on his becoming Lebanon”s next premier. We can assume he wants the job, while his rhetoric after last weekend”s parliamentary elections has been magnanimous and inclusive.
If this comes to pass, Hariri must perform a quick reality check. He”d be taking office in a Lebanon that has an eerie resemblance to the country that his father assumed responsibility for, back in 1992.
We won”t be able to see photographs that evoke this comparison. We used to see Rafik Hariri walk around the devastated downtown Beirut area back then, taking stock of the destruction as well as the plans to rebuild.
Today, Saad Hariri faces a similar challenge vis-ˆ-vis the Lebanese state itself. As an edifice of central power, a network of machinery that helps citizens process their daily affairs, an arena of participation, a place for adjudication and solving disputes, and a tool and engine of development – on all these fronts, the state is, practically speaking, as devastated as the urban space that Saad”s father used to inspect, and vow to rebuild.
We won”t see pictures of Saad Hariri touring the damaged state, but it”s there nonetheless and needs serious work on various fronts: procedural, legal, political, or even private sector-related. Our private sector isn”t trained in how to reap the public”s energies and produce a new Lebanon. It”s part of the debris, not the assets.
While Rafik Hariri functioned largely alone on the physical reconstruction effort, the same isn”t true for Saad and political reconstruction. To succeed as prime minister, he”ll have to build consensus and rely on true expertise for the many specialized tasks of political reform. He”ll have to be the marketer of a new Lebanon, convincing his colleagues in Parliament, his peers in the Cabinet and his interlocutors in National Dialogue about the model he thinks can succeed. He”ll need to direct resources to the right economic sectors, or, for example, turn Lebanon into a regional center for education or medical treatment. We used to enjoy such comparative advantage but have lost it. All we have now are our bars and our weather, and we appear to be set on destroying our environment.
Hariri needs the right concept and a new set of rules for the game in Lebanon. If he plays by the same old ones, he”ll remain a newcomer at a corrupt game already mastered by the entrenched interests and enemies of reform.