It has been a year since Lebanon agreed on a path out of its crises, promising to undertake serious reform efforts in exchange for the $11 billion pledged by the international community at CEDRE. The nine months after CEDRE were primarily spent on political bargaining and government formation, all built on the hope that these funds were the way out of our current malaise. These past two months our new government has become obsessed with securing the CEDRE funding, revealing how addicted our political elite are to handouts. Yet there has been no indication that the government is even capable of enacting the reforms needed to unlock CEDRE funding. Their hunger to divvy up the promised funds has blinded them to the reality of what reform really means. They have fallen into a trap of their own making. In order to access the $11 billion, the government will have to
