The Daily Star, 7 septembre 2002

Opinion

Bumps on the road to reform by Nassib Bulos

  In one of my more lucid  moments, I coined a phrase: “Traffic policemen in Beirut do not direct traffic; they  simply confirm it.” This is all the more true today. The Lebanese government has  provided us with irrefutable evidence that my dictum is unfortunately true, in the form of  speed bumps, which have been proliferating as rats in a sewer. Speed bumps are the odious  confirmation that the Lebanese government and its cops are incapable of controlling traffic, hence the speed bumps to slow down and control the traffic. Needless to say,  these bumps are in no way indicated. It is left to the motorist to guess their location at  his or her own risk and peril.

  We can understand the need for speed bumps on a long stretch of desert road where traffic  is moving at 130 kilometers per hour, such as between Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah. Speed  bumps exist, but they are clearly indicated with broad yellow lines at least 100 meters  before you get to them. But not in Beirut, where over a 30-meter road junction to my  house, I have to go over three bumps, which are all unmarked and hence invisible at night.  Fashions come and go as the years pass. The year 2002 can be designated as the year of the  speed bump.

 These bumps are not the only manifestation of government impotence. To hear our  politicians and ministers roar, you get the impression that you have wounded boars or  bulls on hand. The reality is that boar or bull, in either case, they have been castrated,  such that their tiresome tirades regarding so called administrative and fiscal reforms are  no more than rhetorical exercises in futility. What is worse is that more often than not,  the government resorts to outright blackmail as a means of exercising its powers. Let us  take an example. A citizen leases a flat, but before he can have water and electricity  supplied, he has to prove that the previous tenant has settled all outstanding invoices   a form of flagrant blackmail on the part of government and its institutions and evidence  of its inability or failure to collect outstanding utility invoices. This elementary duty  is passed on to the citizen.

 This is not something new. It has always existed. Lebanese governments have consistently  failed to govern since 1943. The slogan has always been: “Don’t worry, it can be  fixed.” This “fixing business” has deformed the Lebanese mentality to a  point where citizens have no respect for government, and hence defrauding government of its taxes and other dues has been refined into a fine art.

 Human beings are not born with a civic sense. Education alone is not enough to instill it.  It has to be coupled with the whip. So long as the government fails to exercise powers as  it should, reform will always remain an empty phrase.

 Nassib Bulos, Beirut, Lebanon