Given the opaque functioning of the Lebanese state, it is good that sessions of the Parliament are open for the public to see. Unfortunately, they are akin to vultures tearing apart a carcass. In some 62 speeches and 28 hours of debate that took place over the three-day session last month, there were screams and accusations, name-calling and finger pointing, with hardly an allusion to progressive public policy. In utopia, parliamentarians represent their constituents’ demands before the convention of government, which then attempts to fulfill these demands within resource constraints. In Lebanon, the Parliament is utterly detached from the lives of the Lebanese, its members asserting the interests of their sectarian overlords and the public purse fought over for plunder. For years now Lebanon’s enterprising and entrepreneurial private sector has been surrogate mother to a people abandoned by the state, spurring new business and generating new wealth and employment. But
