Can Lebanon leave the dark ages?

Today the Lebanese pay for electricity four times: when the bill collector comes knocking, when the government has to use money collected from the citizens or borrowed in their name to cover losses in the sector, when they pay for private generation, and when the television fizzles out due to power surges. The situation has persisted since the end of the civil war, with plans to reform the sector coming and going as quickly as Lebanon’s post-war governments. As such, it would be easy to dismiss the most recent plan issued by Energy Minster Gebran Bassil and approved by the Council of Ministers, Lebanon’s cabinet, as just another chapter in the long running saga that is Lebanese electricity. But given the relative stability of Lebanon’s political scene of late and the broad nature of the new plan, at least comparatively speaking, this time could be different. The five-year plan, which