In a May 6, 2014 article in the pro-Hizbullah Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, columnist Jean 'Aziz claimed that a foreign plane recently landed in Beirut airport carrying chemical weapons and that these weapons were then transported through Beirut in a truck without any safety precautions. 'Aziz recounts this as part of his criticism of the current Lebanese government, which is a national unity government encompassing nearly all of the country's political forces. He says that in Lebanon, the state institutions, including the court system and media, are not independent and cannot be counted upon to expose the leaders' incompetence and crimes. Therefore, the only way in which scandals are exposed is when leaders quarrel and reveal each other's inadequacies. Conversely, when a broad-coalition government is formed, the leaders sweep all problems and scandals under the rug in the name of unity. Lebanon's current government is now displaying this tendency, he says, by trying to cover up all the offenses of its predecessor, Najib Mikati's 11-month interim government – including the scandal of the plane loaded with chemical weapons.
The following are excerpts from the article:[1]
Jean 'Aziz (image: twitter.com/JeanAziz1)
"Clearly, the worst kind of government an undeveloped country can have is a government based on a broad coalition, [like the one] Lebanon has today... In a country like Lebanon, one cannot count on the… constitutional [state] institutions to expose scandals, and one certainly cannot count on the moral rectitude of [state] officials to prevent serious crimes. Unfortunately, we are not living in a country where the citizens' political culture or where civil sensitivity to public opinion is sufficient to deter rulers from abusing their power or embezzling public funds... [Moreover,] in a country like Lebanon it is obviously impossible to count solely on the media to keep those in power from straying or force them to examine themselves or hold them to account for their transgressions. Most of our media is in crisis... Most of it is directly owned by politicians and directly or indirectly funded by them... Finally, in a country like Lebanon, it is a joke to count on the court [system] to correct the flaws of the other branches [of government]. Suffice it to remember and remind [the reader] that Lebanon's judicial system is an independent constitutional authority only on paper… In practice... it is as far from being independent as Lebanon itself is far from being independent.
"Hence, in a country like Lebanon one cannot rely on any of the abovementioned [institutions] to expose the scandals of the rulers and politicians... For a long time, the [public's] only way to discover some of the secrets of the dens of power was to wait for some dispute to emerge among their denizens, who then tended to wash their dirty laundry in public... [This happened], for example, on the day when the political tension between the late prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri and then-president Amine Gemayel reached its peak. Then we [suddenly] heard on television how one of them [Al-Hariri] came to offer Gemayel's advisor tens of millions in return for the post of Lebanese prime minister. Another example was during the era of Syrian [sponsorship] over Lebanon, when the 'security state plan' was in bitter conflict with 'Al-Hariri's partnership plan.' This too was an opportunity for a loud and lovely parade that exposed the shame of both sides...
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"In a state like Lebanon, then, the only chance to discover something of our leaders' scandalous conduct is to wait for disputes among them. So when these quarrels and disputes are hidden beneath the slogan of national unity, the silence and concealment become absolute, as though the omertà – the code of silence of the mafia world – has become the state constitution. [Then] everyone is happy, everyone shines with contentment. There are no [damning] reports and nobody to make [such] reports.
"The last item on the agenda of a government session [that took place] several days ago... effectively dealt with covering up all the actions of the Najib Mikati interim government. We are talking of over 470 offenses that [our current government] wished to erase with a single sweep of the rag called 'national reconciliation'...
"One example [of these offenses is an incident in which] a foreign plane landed one day in Beirut airport carrying a kind of weapon of mass destruction. [This weapon] was transported through Beirut in a [Ford] transit, in complete violation of all Lebanese laws and in disregard of the safety of Lebanon and the Lebanese people. But today 'national interest' [is evoked] to cover this up retroactively. The wage of the poor [Lebanese] teachers cannot be raised retroactively, but our national interest government, in its generosity, has retroactively taken care of all the scandals and offenses committed during the 11-month [rule of Najib Mikati's interim government] – [offenses] which undermined the very foundations of our country. Just as the Tripoli ship vanished without a trace, now an entire plane has vanished, and every whiff of the chemical weapons it carried has been washed away by the national interest government...
"Who will uncover these large [scandals] in our country? The threatened media? The submissive public? The parliamentary elections that never took place? The court system? As for the court system, it recently appointed 22 new judges, all of whom passed the entry exam, which, as everyone knows, requires achieving a score of 60 out of 100. The members of the judiciary joke that the score achieved by eight of those who successfully passed the exam was never published, and that half of the rest happened to score exactly 60. Who will expose these heavy scandals?... In certain god-forsaken African countries they have a saying: 'When elephants fight, the grass beneath them gets trampled, and when they mate the grass beneath them gets trampled as well.'"
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), May 6, 2014.
