France’s top diplomat Jean-Yves Le Drian scolded Lebanon’s leadership Thursday for failing to take the measures he said are necessary to save the country from collapse. The story is here.
“Help us to help you is the message of my visit,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said after meeting Lebanese leaders in Beirut, adding that Paris stood ready to mobilise support but there must be concrete action on reform.
Lebanon’s financial crisis, rooted in decades of state corruption and waste, marks the biggest threat to the country’s stability since the 1975-90 civil war. A collapsing currency has led to soaring inflation and poverty, and savers have lost free access to accounts in a paralysed banking system.
Le Drian, on the first such visit of a top foreign politician in months, made no secret of his exasperation with a leadership he described as “passive”…
After the country defaulted on its debt for the first time in March, the government pledged reforms and two months ago started talks with the International Monetary Fund.
But the negotiations have hit a wall, with two top members of the government’s own team resigning, allegedly in frustration at the administration’s lack of commitment to reform.
“There is no alternative to an IMF programme to allow Lebanon to exit the crisis,” Le Drian warned….
For the IMF to give Lebanon billions in aid, the Lebanese government will have to agree to political and economic reforms that so far it has not been willing, or able, to undertake. But without the IMF loans, Lebanon cannot expect France – which has. a longstanding link to Lebanon, not only as the former holder of the Mandate for Lebanon, but as the historic protector of the francophone Maronite community – to send aid.
“France is ready to fully mobilise at Lebanon’s side and to mobilise all its partners, but for that serious and credible recovery measures have to be implemented,” the French minister said.
He singled out as an example the loss-making electricity sector, where reforms have been dragging for years.
Among the reforms needed to be undertaken at Electricite du Liban is to cut its bloated, and not always competent staff, whose salaries eat up funds that might otherwise go to updating aging infrastructure. Like other publicly-owned utilities in Lebanon, the state electricity company has been a place where family and friends of politicians, though often unqualified, can find employment. Widespread nepotism, and the need to parcel out jobs according to a formula that takes into account each religious sect, instead of hiring and promoting strictly on individual merit, helps explain the continued mismanagement of the electricity company, resulting in the frequent blackouts Lebanese customers must endure.
“I can say clearly that what has been done until now in this field is not encouraging,” he said.
What “has been done until now” is essentially nothing. The IMF talks drag on, but the Lebanese government still refuses to take concrete steps at reform. Two of those involved in talks with the IMF resigned in apparent disgust at their own government’s failure to propose meaningful reforms. The reforms the IMF demands would in the end require the current members of the Lebanese government to fire themselves (for their own mismanagement and corruption), and remove their relatives and friends from their unmerited jobs at publicly-owned companies, including utilities; this they will not do. As long as the members of the government continue to benefit from the current arrangement, for all their public wringing of hands over Lebanon’s “plight,” they do not seem sufficiently worried for their own economic wellbeing to make the reforms, including transparency about their own deal-making, that the IMF is calling for.
The corruption is widespread. Ex-Foreign Minsiter Gebran Bassil somehow managed, on a modest government salary, to accumulate real estate worth $25 million. His father-in-law, President Michel Aoun, has amassed a fortune of $90 million. The Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, Nabih Berri, has a net worth of $80 million. Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah and the most powerful political figure in Lebanon, has a net worth of $250 million. Where do you think all those fortunes came from?
Meanwhile, ordinary Lebanese are sinking into poverty. There is now mass unemployment, and salaries have been slashed. The Lebanese pound has lost 80% of its value since October. Prices are soaring and goods disappearing. Young people, especially the professionals who would be of most value to the Lebanese economy, are leaving the country, hoping to find a better life abroad. And despite this ruinous economic condition for the for the state, those at the top still refuse to promise to undertake the reforms demanded by the IMF. Two members of the team that had been negotiating with the IMF have resigned in protest at their own government’s failure to accept the need for meaningful reform.
…”I was reading in Lebanese newspapers that Lebanon was waiting for Le Drian. No, it’s France that’s waiting for Lebanon,” he said.
“What is striking to us is how passive the authorities of this country are,” Le Drian said during a conversation with the head of Amel about soaring poverty levels.
This is an extraordinary criticism, far beyond what one ordinarily expects of a suave French diplomat, but clearly Le Drian and the French government are fed up and furious at the inability of the Lebanese government to institute even minimal reforms.
The Lebanese government is composed mostly of incompetents and crooks, some of whom rose to their present positions through rampant nepotism (such as former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, the son-in-law of President Michel Aoun). But while there is a shuffling of chairs, the permanent cast of characters cannot be changed from below. Protesters in Lebanon have marched to no avail; they have been violently put down by Hezbollah, which supports the current government. Hezbollah, after all, has its own members in the government, and also controls others who, like the Maronite President Michel Aoun, have thrown in their lot – whether out of pusillanimity, greed, or fear – with Hezbollah, and do its bidding.
Le Drian’s uncompromising tone echoed an appeal he made in the French Senate earlier this month and which was widely reported in Lebanon: “Help us help you, dammit.”
“I said dammit the other day in the Senate so I wouldn’t have to use a swear word. It was an affectionate word but it came with a dose of anger,” he said.
mortimer says
The Shi’ites in Lebanon have been playing games for centuries. The Shi’ites are world-class champions of taqiyya. Their mullahs take post-doctoral degrees in taqiyya. It is no wonder they have brought Lebanon to ruin. They have been plundering the Christian Maronite Ghassanids who are the oldest tribe of Christian Arabs in the Middle East.
MykeJohn says
Lebanon failed to understand that to sup with children of shi’ites one needs a long spade!
gravenimage says
French Foreign Minister Le Drian to Lebanon: ‘Help Us to Help You’ (Part 1)
………………..
Hizb’allah has destroyed Lebanon, which used to be known as the “Paris of the Levant”, and had a thriving economy second only to that of Israel. No more…
James Lincoln says
To your point, gravenimage. 1968 Lebanon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBPYiMY-NYU
Claudius says
And the Sunnis attacked 7 years later….
gravenimage says
Thanks for that lovely travelogue, James–so sad. Things were just about to go to hell, although no one knew it. Lebanon seemed like one of the real success stories–a second Israel, almost. Very few women wear head coverings, and the few who do are just wearing Western-style scarves, which just protect hair on windy days, rather than erasing their identity.
Have you read Brigitte Gabriel’s wrenching account of the Lebanese “civil war”? She was a ten-year-old girl when this Islamic savagery broke out.
Dawne says
Lebanon – another country killed by Muslim extremism and corruption. I think it’s too far gone to save – let it be a lesson to western countries.