Friday, June 25, 2021

Is It Time for Lebanon to Rise for a Bill of Rights?

Speech Delivered at SOUL Convention on Lebanon on 06/25/2021 |1:30pm

Thank you to all the distinguished organizers of this Convention here in Washington DC and in Beirut. Thank you for all your hard work. And above all thank you for your belief that there is still hope for our homeland worthy of all our efforts.

For those who do not know me, my name is Wissam Yafi. I am a Lebanese American techie, writer and activist. And of course involved in the Lebanese uprising for the past 18 months. I have participated in protests, discussions, strategies, talks, webinars, fundraises, conventions, you name it. I am one of many fellow citizens wanting to see positive change in Lebanon so that one day we can see the homeland in a much better state than it is in today.

The experience has been as fascinating as it admittedly has been frustrating at times. Grassroots democracy can be slow and difficult, especially in a place like Lebanon, whose very definition of the term is diluted with so many attached strings and conditions. And yet, a large portion of the Lebanese people persist and resist. They do so peacefully. And they do so against not one perfect storm but multiple. It might seem unfair for a small country to be going through so much all at once; or perhaps, in His great wisdom, the Almighty has decided that nothing short of all this will make the Lebanese people rise and finally learn to stand on our own two feet. 

The question many of us are asking at this point is what are we rising for? We all know of course what and who we are rising against. A more difficult question is what exactly are we rising for? The title of this convention is SOUL that is based on Love and Unity. How can we translate it to so that it becomes institutionalized in such a way that our children and their children’s children would never ever forget it, but rather build a future of peace and prosperity based on a Lebanese soul, dare we call it identity? Seen from this perspective, the Lebanese uprising has set a clear delineation between those in Lebanon who are fighting for a destructive system that has swallowed society’s entire wellbeing. And those of us desperately trying to change it so that the Lebanese identity, as it was originally conceived by our forefathers can rise again like our proverbial Phenix.

This raises an interesting dilemma that I am often asked: When does one attempt to change a system, a Nizzam? Does one change it when things are good or when things are bad? Some will answer that a “Nizzam” or system cannot be changed when things are bad because there are other priorities. In the meantime, economists will stand here and suggest this or that economic solution. Financiers will pull out some of their cigars and blow smoke while discussing restructuring debt. The international community will talk about corruption and reform. International donor agencies will talk of poverty and of aid to the poor. Society will talk about the political class. Parties, new and old, will talk about elections and how to win them. But will any of this reach the essence of the problem?

As grey clouds hover above, it sometimes seems like everyone is looking at our cedar tree from their own angle and diagnosing that it is wilting and about to die, but are they digging into the soil to look at the condition of the roots, especially since the whole world senses a deeply mired and rotted system that effectively is eating away at the state? Meaning how likely would trimming this branch or that branch bring the Cedar back?

So, what is the root of the problem in Lebanon? There is plenty of blame to spread around for sure. And those who are in power today do not help their own cause by being utterly inept in almost every field. From the President and Prime Minister who have absolved themselves of any responsibility of the calamity befallen their people, to incompetent ministers who no one trusts nor knows how they get to their positions of power, to a beholden judiciary and security apparatus that is incapable of upholding the oath they made to the people, to a parliament which is incapable of providing any sense of oversight or any meaningful legislation or constitutional reform for well over three decades.

But truth be told, none of this is new to Lebanon. Similar bouts of institutional meltdowns have been happening since independence. Different attempts have been made by different groups to reign over the nation in different political, financial, and military ways over and over again; but they all failed. Under this system, it seemed the nation with so much potential is almost doomed to rinse and repeat failure. So let us be clear, as much as many in Lebanon and around the world would like to point a finger at a group or individual culprit; and serve up simplistic solutions to Lebanon’s deeply rooted problems, Lebanon’s current calamity did not start in 2019, the 2000’s, the 90’s, 80’s, 70’s or 60’s. It started upon its establishment as a nation a century ago through a faulty system that tried to accommodate the notion of religious communities, but unfortunately ended up doing it at the expense of the state and the individual citizen. While some claim that the current system actually helped establish co-existence between religious communities, it is hard for them to explain why then all the instability over the decades, and why has the common citizen has always had to bear the price? I stand in front of you today with full rights of a citizen in my adopted land in the United States, having left my homeland of Lebanon many years back because it didn’t afford them for me. Today history is repeating itself for many young Lebanese whose rights are being suppressed and usurped day in day out. Nor could they answer how exactly a community is being protected when its people are destitute and forced to immigrate from the land and the history that the notion of community is meant to protect.

Like many fellow Lebanese, I find it very hard to reconcile these basic contradictions, and even harder to demand things from others while insisting on maintaining inequalities and privileges. But truth has to be told: How can we as men demand equality under the law, if the law treats women unequally? How can we demand people to be good citizens, if the state in its very design does not treat them equibaly? How can we build a future that promotes a vision of inclusiveness, while insisting on holding on to discriminative privileges in the present? 

The history of the country where I stand today, the United States, teaches us that sometimes hard choices need to be made. When they are made, society inches forward. When they aren’t made, society gets stuck and eventually pays a price. Not many know that the US started off being sectarian as a state. Fortunately, they resolved this through constitutional tools that provided equality for the citizenry regardless of religion. Overtime, this process has grown to include many would be marginalized elements of society. Heck the current President is from a religious minority. And yet, this process did not cancel out religion. On the contrary, after more than two centuries religious freedom holds and while religion does a play a role in society, society is not divided along religious lines. Unfortunately, the same cannot necessarily be said of the issue of race, which the United States’ Founding fathers found very hard to solve in their day because of slavery; and whose can was kicked down the road, resulting in occasional bouts of racial tensions and even civil war. Proof of this is a mere block away at Black Lives Matter Plaza. The point here is that even in advanced and powerful nations, root problems can persist for centuries if left unresolved.

In the Franco-American tradition, and influenced by that history through colonialism, Lebanon’s constitutional creation in many ways was ahead of it is time and applied some liberalized principles. 

It was admired by many at the time and catapulted the nation forward—at least it gave that impression during the 1950’s and 60’s. But deep inside there were deep systemic flaws. The one issue that Lebanon’s founding fathers kicked down the road was how to deal with religious communities, with the choice being given to perpetuate sectarian identity as opposed to a national one. Of course, they knew the dilemma and debated it at the time, but like the American founders on the issue of slavery, the Lebanese founders could not solve it, and so they were compelled to institutionalize it. The sectarian fault lines soon began to be exposed, influenced by either internal differences or regional/geopolitical ones. And so, while strengthening communal identity may not necessarily have been deemed fatal at the time, over the course of decades, it became a tool for political influence and clientelism and started eating away at the national identity. This became an existential problem when politicians took over the reign of the different communities and used religion to raise community fears to compete for power and perpetuate their own power.

But if the problem in Lebanon at its root is as basic as its constitution, how to solve it? Can an economic plan be sufficient? Can a financial restructuring plan (and there have been many) be the silver bullet? Can changing the President or the Prime Minister do the trick? Or can a parliamentary election bring about the desired change. Surely, some of these steps could help, but we also must be cognizant of the fact that our generation is not necessarily any smarter or any more special than those that came before us. While we do have the benefit of hindsight, we must recognize that so do the current regime. So why have they not changed things if only to perpetuate their own interests as opposed to the calamity that is basically falling on their heads and that of their supporters? Some would say that they don’t really care and are beyond such calculations. Others who consider them more rational might say that the system in which they operate has become so broken that it even overwhelmed its own architects.

A more compelling question than one trying to psychoanalyze the incumbent political class is where are the Lebanese people in all this and why has any meaningful constitutional change not been realized considering Lebanon in some way or another, and as flawed as it may be, is still a democracy? A clue can be found in the careful analysis of the Lebanese constitution, which is about 60 pages long. Interestingly if one inspects the document’s wording, the word President appears 62 times, the word “Minister” appears 63 times, the word “Parliament” 87 times, the word state or institution 49 times, and the word citizen … only ONCE. Any casual observer could easily conclude that the Lebanese Constitution’s priorities are clearly not in favor of the common citizen. In fact, judging by the political, economic, social, and judicial abuse we are witnessing in Lebanon, one could easily conclude that the Lebanese citizen is found at the bottom of the social pyramid as opposed to being at its pinnacle. Is it a surprise then that Lebanese citizen rights are being trampled upon by an inattentive state, by community usurpers, by a political mafia, by banks, by greedy merchants, and if I may add by foreign powers?

Lebanon’s systemic problem is in its faulty Constitution that has resulted in destructive system that perpetuates bad rule leading to unrelenting cycles of instability, attempts of constitutional sequestration to dominate a carcass of a state, mired in institutional gridlock, communities pitted against each other and dominated by sectarian warlords and corrupt politicians, and ultimately a nation and its people who are bankrupt.

It is here that we have to go back and ask: When does one change a system? Is it done when times are good? Or is it done when the GDP has fallen by more than 40%? When poverty has engulfed more than 50% of the population? When the nation has no electricity or water or roads? When the political system is gridlocked? When people are immigrating? And when people are denied withdrawal of their savings?

I would suggest that one changes a system when one is honest enough to admit its failure and brave enough to reach the conclusion that things can never go back to what they were. That is basically what many Lebanese are rising to boldly demand. The system is dead: We need a new one that flips on its head the power structure in Lebanon, raising the Lebanese citizen above every other consideration. To do that, the Lebanese are calling for a Citizen Bill of Rights that meets our demands and our aspirations as a people. A Bill of rights that relinquishes power from the usurpers and gives it back to us the People …

This is not theory. This is not academia. This is about diving into the root of the Lebanese problem and facing the problem head on. It is about freeing ourselves of a system that has shackled us for decades and treated our fellow citizens unfairly. It is about rectifying the past by presenting a vision that would essentially alter the fundamental relationship between the Lebanese Citizen and the Lebanese state through Constitutional Amendment. It is about declaring with one voice that we The Lebanese people are unified in calling for a nation with equality, empathy, respect, and yes love! 

It is trying times like these that require truthful introspection. I believe at its heart the Lebanese Soul’s mission is not yet fulfilled. Our forefathers tried but failed at reaching the destination. Perhaps it is time we now tried something brave, bold, and different that could potentially not only change the face of our nation but the region as a whole. Why not show our people and the world at large that we stand united behind a Bill of Rights that protects all citizens equally under the law? Why not fight for a unique vision that creates a direct bond between the citizen and a caring state? Why not overcome the present predicament for our people and chart a better future for our children and theirs? Is it not time to be bold and brave and to call for a Lebanese Citizen Bill of Rights? And if not now, then when? 

I will end by sharing with you excerpts of a draft Bill of Rights, which is the product of the Lebanese people for a Lebanon that many of us are fighting for:


Read the Bill of Rights …  


Thank you …