A new war of words in Lebanon

Beirut: Stressing the importance of controlling public funds, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a pillar of the March 8 opposition group allied with Hezbollah, championed the transparency cause in Lebanon, as it maintained that its own record was unblemished while just about everyone else was seriously corrupt.

General Michel Aoun, its leader and former Commander of the Army who once was anti-Syrian but is now a Damascus ally, and other party officials repeatedly pledged to uproot corruption and, towards that end, published The Impossible Vindication (Al Abriya’ Al Mustahil in the original Arabic), which detailed the mismanagement of government finances at the hands of former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Siniora, who served with the late assassinated prime minister Rafik Hariri, is one of the pro-March 14 movement leaders.

This past week, the Future Movement published its own book, Slander in the Vindication Book (Al Iftira’ fi Kitab Al Abriya’) that responded to various accusations. Siniora refuted FPM allegations that successive governments since 1993 misappropriated funds and tampered with budget figures, asserting that its own charts, documents and tables showed how its rival’s contentions were all fabricated. The former prime minister promised further books to unravel supposed FPM corruption.

This written exchange was interspersed with a cartoon booklet, paid for by the Ministry of Energy and Water, which lauded Minister Gibran Bassil’s accomplishments. Bassil’s “A Nation’s Dream” [Hilm Watan], which is set in 2020, stars the minister and his son as the two board a metro in Batroun heading towards Beirut. Along the way, they pass by all the projects that Bassil started, ranging from dams to gas pipes and the Beirut River solar project. The father-son team breathe clean air as they navigate close to the Zouk power plant and even smell roses as they cross the Dora public dump, a current eyesore that was miraculously transformed into a tourist-filled garden. The “Dream” ends with Bassil telling his son how proud he feels to be among those who contributed to transforming the country into the paradise it apparently became.

A leading NGO, the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections, accused the Energy Minister of abusing his position to polish his image for electoral gains, as it stressed that the comic book that identified dam constructions and gas extraction could only be tolerated if the minister promised not to run for the parliament seat he lost in 2009. Regrettably, no such commitments were forthcoming, as both General Aoun’s son-in-law and, of course, the leader of the FPM repeated the mantra: “We are waging a war to liberate Lebanese society from corruption.”

Ironically, and although the FPM pamphlet contained serious accusations, neither Aoun nor his party resorted to the courts. It remained to be determine whether such a step would now be taken, especially as Future maintained that Aoun, who was commander of the Lebanese Army in the late 1980s, shelled the Finance Ministry’s buildings to destroy documents that could have incriminated his alleged embezzlement of public funds.

Pamphleteering was a common tool of warfare during the Jahiliyyah, a dark period in Arab/Muslim history that distinguished itself with serious decay, and which may also be the case in contemporary Lebanon. The FPM issued an “orange book” in 2005 to vaunt its credentials and, more recently, circulated a leaflet against May Chidiac, after the former journalist declared she was going to run against Aoun. That missive insinuated that Chidiac was a half person, besmirching an assassination survivor — she is a double amputee who dared to challenge a tenor of authority.

It’s as if the Lebanese were not too preoccupied with security threats that a new war of words must now be added to their long and growing list of concerns. With promised fresh books, Lebanon was set to relive the epochal Jahiliyyah period, producing little of value.