LEBANON: Protestors warn politicians they’re fed up

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Think Americans have it bad with their elected leaders?

Consider the Lebanese, whose politicians have somehow managed to bring the country back to the brink of civil war 18 years after the end of the last one.

On Friday, as Lebanon’s political leaders headed to the recently reopened airport to fly to Qatar and attempt to resolve their differences, a group of disabled Lebanese, many of them disfigured in the last civil war, gathered at the airport to greet them with a blunt message: If they don’t work out a new power-sharing deal, they should just stay away.

‘If you don’t agree,’ said signs held up by the demonstrators, ‘don’t come back!!!’

Many Lebanese are fed up with the country’s politicians, whether Sunni, Shiite, Christian or Druze. Lebanon’s pols have a lot of flair. They tend to dress impeccably and drive eye-catching late-model sedans and SUVs. Even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wears his black turban with style.

Many have been around forever. Take Walid Jumblatt, who has over the decades transformed himself from playboy to warlord, from Syrian ally to Syrian enemy and from anti-American Arab nationalist celebrating the crashing of the Space Shuttle Columbia to a U.S. ally conspiring with the State Department to fight America’s enemies in Lebanon.

But when it comes to handling minute matters of state, even politicians admit they ill-serve their constituents. Corruption is rife in Lebanon and public infrastructure rots. A rain-soaked country criss-crossed by rivers, Lebanon suffers chronic water shortages. The country produces a bountiful annual harvest of world-class engineers and scientists, but most Lebanese only get about 18 hours of electricity a day.

Given all that, one can understand why protesters greet their leaders with blunt warnings instead of wishes of good luck.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

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