No quick fix from Damascus summit
Conventional wisdom has it that Saudi King Abdullah’s landmark visit to Syria this week will be the key that unlocks the impasse over the formation of a cabinet in Lebanon. Now that the Saudi monarch and the Syrian president have made amends with each other and have publicly called for the formation of a unity government in Lebanon, it is assumed that the stalemate in Beirut will suddenly be resolved.
So should the Lebanese expect that all of their country’s political problems will now melt away? Almost certainly not. Even if the Saudi-Syrian rapprochement does somehow speed the formation of a unity government in Lebanon, this country will still be handicapped by a haphazardly designed Constitution that leads to countless dead ends, a parliamentary election law that fails to ensure democratic representation, a massive public debt that is exacerbated by corruption and a judiciary that is subject to the whims of those in power.
What’s perhaps even worse is that the Lebanese will still be stuck with many of the same leaders who have spent years in power without moving to solve any of these problems. In fact, while King Abdullah and President Bashar Assad were busy actually running their countries and signing bilateral agreements this week, many members of Lebanon’s political class spent their time doing nothing but pontificating about the possible benefits Lebanon might reap from the Saudi-Syrian summit in Damascus.
Lebanon’s own leaders are to blame for the fact that Beirut lacks a government several months after elections – and for the fact that they have made no serious attempt to repair the cracks in the country’s political system. But politicians in this country tend to shift the responsibility for their own failings by blaming “foreign interference.” They then wait for foreign powers to come and resolve whichever problems are said to have been created by external meddling. Rarely if ever do they assume responsibility for Lebanon’s ills and devise plans and strategies of their own for curing them.
A sad testament to the status quo is the fact that so many editorialists and commentators in Lebanon have called for the swift formation of a unity cabinet, and have opined that the country would be better of with any new government, even one that isn’t really functional. The underlying suggestion is that such a government wouldn’t be much different from the one we have now.
The Lebanese deserve much better from their leaders. Citizens have little reason to believe that the breakthrough in Saudi-Syrian relations will dissolve the impasse in Beirut – and they have even less reason to think that it will reverse the damage that has been done by their leaders’ inaction on so many important issues.