Time is ticking. President Michel Suleiman has to make up his mind soon on whether he wants to be remembered as just another Lebanese politician or as a president of historic proportions.
Views are now split among Leadership experts
on the performance of Suleiman who took office more than a year ago. Some
scholars are praising his interventions and others are saying that he could
have done much better.
The many who praise the president,
highlight the following as his achievements:
- Commanded local and international respect for his values and character
- Reinstated the position and image of the office of the presidency as a symbol of the country’s structure of formal authority
- Capitalized well on the international support for Beirut by visiting many countries to present Lebanon to the world as a recovering rather than a failed state
- Understood the balance of power inside and outside Lebanon and maintained good relations with all parties
- Earned the representation of most Lebanese as their head of state who cared about their diverse concerns and maintained economic and social stability
- Has been trying hard to get the rival factions of the country to talk to each other and reach a minimal agreement on the fundamental principles that should govern their living together
- Received appreciation as a voice of wisdom and moderation in a country known for political recklessness
- Suleiman has admirably done the above with his little constitutional power. People close to him speak of his frustration for not being able to do more because of the constraints of his authority.
Critics, however, say further progress
could have been achieved since Suleiman was elected had he taken advantage of
other sources of strength available to him, beyond the limits of the
constitution, particularly the ability to connect with the nation directly and
build political capital with the public because of the power of attention that
people and the media give to the president. They believe Suleiman is dealing
with an extraordinary situation, where new problem-solving approaches and
creative ideas are needed, with a conventional way of thinking that has been
for decades repeatedly tried and failed. They fear that his six-year term will
be yet another missed opportunity to exercise leadership in his traumatized
country.
What is wrong with Lebanon?
Lebanon is dysfunctional mainly because it
is made of heterogeneous rival factions that distrust each other due to their
deep-rooted bloody common history and because of their contradictory beliefs
about the identity, future, values and priorities of the country. Such a severe
and acute structural fault cannot be fixed by just refining the process of
governing the state like changing the electoral process, the composition of the
cabinet, the distribution of power among the factions or even a new constitution
(20 years after the Taif constitution, the same core problems still exist). All
these processes are extremely important and should be carefully worked out
because they provide a holding environment to society but they remain short
term and temporary technical fixes that will generate more problems if the
mindset of the Lebanese is not changed. The malfunctioning process of
governance and the dominant impact of foreign interventions are dangerous but
they are symptoms and not the root issues.
It is therefore unfortunate that much of
the efforts made so far, including that of the president, are about dealing
with the symptoms rather than the core diseases. It is sad that the past years
have been wasted without significant progress by finding commonly agreeable
answers to basic questions like: What does it mean to be Lebanese? Do the
Lebanese really want to live together? Are they prepared to do the necessary
sacrifices to live together in peace? In fact, not only much of the real issues
have been avoided for generations but matters have become worse. The country
that was divided religiously is now also infested with sectarian conflicts, the
government is paralyzed, public and foreign debt is huge, armed forces are
incapable of imposing order and are less militarized than some of the local
factions while allegiance to external powers is dominant.
Successful elections?
Even the last parliamentary elections that
were hailed as a success, they were held simply because the Lebanese factions
(and their foreign sponsors) allowed them to happen. It is distressing that the
voting greatly added to the massively painful collective memory of the Lebanese
because the election campaigns used fear, anger, hatred, vengeance and distrust
to mobilize people, making their rifts deeper. Watching people carrying their
semi-conscious old and disabled parents and grandparents to voting stations to
vote against their rival fellow citizens graphically demonstrated the level of
mutual distrust among the Lebanese who often clash violently at the slightest
triggers.
Who can clear the mess?
Of course it is unfair and naïve to
believe that the burden of cleaning all this mess lies on the shoulders of the
president or any single party alone. The responsibility is on all the Lebanese.
It would be almost impossible for anybody, especially a constitutionally
marginalized president, to confront alone the rotten political and sectarian
establishments of power that are feeding off the bleeding wounds of their
country.
The question is then what could president
Suleiman do with such baggage? The answer is to totally “change the game” by
focusing directly on the people, the public, where the heart of the problem and
the solution lies. That is what Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King did.
They helped their communities face their hard realities and change the mindsets
that caused their dilemmas. Without much authority, they were the voice that
raised the level of awareness and consciousness in their societies. This,
certainly, is not an invitation to copy Napoleon the army general, Chavez the
populist, Chairman Mao Zedong the ideologist or previous forms of Lebanese
political experiences that led to the creation of parties that revolve around
individual charismatic figures. This is a call for Suleiman to spend his
remaining five years of presidential term using the vastly unexplored moral
power of the presidency to actively instill new values in the Lebanese people,
values that most Lebanese can agree upon, so that enough common ground is built
in the nation and bridges of trust are extended among its divided people.
Some may argue that this approach is
dreamy, impractical and that the warlords of the country would torpedo attempts
to diminish their power of mobilizing their crowds to serve their ideologies or
personal agendas or that the president does not have the tools to create the
needed “movement of civic and national awareness” in the country. But then
again, what is the alternative? Actuality even the politicians are saying that
the current political activity will at best lead to just a temporary space of
calm. Why? Because the politicians are following the same futile behaviors and
problem-solving thinking that has been practiced in the country for decades:
crises management, self-serving agendas, superficial process-related technical
fixes and total codependence on foreign interventions (precisely as they are
doing now to form a new government). This is exactly Einstein’s definition of
insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Choices?
The president has two choices: 1- Either
to just become the president, of process, protocol, neutrality and political
buffer zones. Or, 2- To emerge, also, as the president of civic awareness and
of a new set of national values. Observers believe that people are thirsty for
the second role because they are fed up with the petty political practices that
have been poisoning their lives for years. They are ready for a leader who
offers a different definition of leadership of historic proportion, a president
of the people who leads from a clean heart and appeals to their good nature.
The Lebanese are eager for an authentic, clear and simple message of hope that
they can solve their problems by themselves and rise into prosperity and that
it is possible for people of different histories to have a good common future
in a state of mutual cooperation rather than of mutual distraction. The great
advantage with the second choice is that Suleiman does not need constitutional
powers to play this role because his has the most valuable asset that
leadership demands – the attention of the people. He also has a substantial but
greatly unutilized community of the intellectual elites and of the cadre of
highly talented and committed activists – the vivid group of Lebanese civil
society that he could easily mobilize in the service of a convincing national
cause.
Is there any other way?
Practically speaking, leadership scholars
recommend that the president, without ignoring at all his constitutional and
political obligations, start interacting much more actively with the civil
society, the elites and with the masses at festivals, conferences, churches,
mosques as well as at sports, arts, scouting, youth and cultural activities and
anywhere he can spread his message of hope and change. It is a vastly different
style from his current classic approach because it involves spending more time
with the people in the field than with politicians at his palace, but there is
no other way if he wants to create impact and build his political capital. He
can form a special team around him to advise him on interventions to preach and
demonstrate a message of civic values, a simple national message (cleverly
constructed from the key messages of all the local parties) that he can
tirelessly repeat everyday over the next five years at every opportunity until
it settles in the subconscious mind of his people. A message such as: Lebanon a
country of ethics free from corruption; a sovereign and independent state that
will defend its territory and resist any aggression; a nation where liberties
and diversity are prime assets not liabilities; what brings Lebanese together
is far bigger than what sets them apart…
Suleiman has had a year to reflect on the
role that he has been playing so far, on its actual impact on dealing with the
core issues and on the prospects of his presidential term if he continues to
confine himself to his current approach. Trying to acquire more power in the
government will for sure be helpful but in the long term the benefits are
mainly tactical. The real working field is the people. It is where the
illnesses and real remedies are. Can the president adapt his style to connect
with the people directly? Can he effectively pass on to them his much-respected
values, insights and wisdom? Can he, while still performing his presidential
role of governance, turn the elites and civil society into his army of
activists and national catalysts? Can he become to be known in history as the
president who helped transform the way Lebanese think about themselves, each
other and their country? Will he just be the president of institutional process
or will he rather be the father of a public movement of civil and national
consciousness? The opportunity is available for time to say “Yes He Can” and
for the coming generations to say “Yes He Did.”
No comments:
Post a Comment