Stand and deliver: The state should answer to the people

After more than five months of a political stalemate and relentless bickering between opposing politicians, the first government headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri was sworn in last December, receiving a record-breaking vote of confidence from parliamentarians and signaling, one would hope, the beginning of a new phase for Lebanon. But the Lebanese have become increasingly cynical vis-à-vis any notion that a change in names will actually lead to a change in governance. They have grown skeptical that a new government would actually present a policy statement reflecting political, social, economic and cultural dimensions. Even when governments did go as far as to establish a “viable” and “realistic” policy statement, they seldom went the extra mile in actually implementing its clauses, creating somewhat of a schizophrenia between rhetoric and reality on the ground. Discussing the cabinet’s policy statement in our “consensual democracy” has become a formality and an end in