The Lebanese were not shy to give voice to their discontent in 2012.
The grievances underlying these manifestations of public discontent were clear: declining purchasing power, the decrepit state of the country’s infrastructure and public institutions, and the seemingly inherent instability and criminality in the country.
Teachers and public sector workers chanted in the streets demanding a proper living wage, taxi and bus drivers blocked roads and major intersections decrying the cost of fuel, while protests struck both ends of the electricity network with customers outraged at the frequent blackouts and workers storming Électricité du Liban offices demanding fair pay and labor rights. Then there were the burning tires, the kidnappings, the protests against kidnappings, retaliatory kidnappings, and farmers and their families blocking the security services from eradicating cannabis crops.
And that’s all aside from recurring armed clashes in Tripoli, along the borders and elsewhere; a brutal assassination; a sinking economy and soaring inflation; refugees flooding in from a civil war next door; a decimated tourism season with its wide impact across business sectors, and increased international pressure on Lebanese banks from the United States, among a litany of other crises. In tandem, our entire political class — both government and opposition — utterly lost whatever moral authority to lead they had left, showing themselves corrupt to the core and inelastic to change.
Had we a crystal ball in January and known all this was in the pipe for the 12 months that were to come, we might have thrown up our hands and booked tickets abroad while writing Lebanon’s last will and testament.
And yet, here we still are. Lebanon persists. Lebanon survives. Because that is what the Lebanese do. And how? Because despite ourselves, despite the pain and the complaints, hope lives in our DNA. Even while businesses were closing this year, others were opening; the entrepreneurial space grew like at no other time in recent memory; developers continued to build around the country, not to sell tomorrow, but the day after — the better day they all say they see coming.
Next year will obviously have its challenges, but avenues are opening for potential progress — the new Capital Markets Authority, the public-private partnership law, maybe even a railroad up the coast.
And then there are the elections. Will the Lebanese finally give voice to their discontent at the ballot box? I’d like to be optimistic.
