Home  Opinion Sfeir's best bet is to help put a new face into Baabda Palace |
|
Sfeir's best bet is to help put a new face into Baabda Palace |
|
|
Written by Daily Star
|
An awful lot has been asked of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir over the past 10 or 20 years. He has had the unenviable task of trying to both guide and represent a key pillar of what makes Lebanon Lebanese during a series of perilous episodes.
And he has received precious little assistance from the higher echelons of his community: Faced with very real threats to their special status in this country's confessional power-sharing system, Maronite politicians have failed a succession of tests. They have battled among themselves, withdrawn from elections, and adopted obscurantist positions that have served only to make them look desperate and make their counterparts in other sects feel suspicious.
Despite the profound loneliness of his mission, Sfeir has managed to restore the Christian aspect of the face that Lebanon presents to the outside world, an especially necessary task when the faith is under pressure or in full retreat in other parts of the region. He has not, however, got the most influential members of his flock to get their individual and collective acts together - a fact lamented by all Lebanese of all legitimate political stripes. And so, because the politicians have failed again - this time over the selection of a president who can lead Lebanon through what promises to be one of the most telling periods in its history - responsibility has once again fallen to Sfeir.
We could do a lot worse. This patriarch has helped to muffle some of the less enlightened discourse emanating from within the Maronite community, on many issues demonstrating far greater moderation and practicality than secular political figures. In addition, he has articulated a vision of coexistence with Lebanon's Muslim communities that could form the basis of a very different political system, one in which the rights of minorities would be protected by the rule of law and an independent judiciary rather than fears (or threats) of civil war. It would also do much to stem the tide of emigration that has crippled all of Lebanon but especially its Christian component.
The patriarch can nurture the formation of such a new model, but he cannot create it himself. The established faces on the political scene are mostly tired ones with little inclination for grand projects or fat ones with no desire to change a set-up that has made them rich and powerful. If Sfeir is to complete his mission of helping Lebanon to achieve a balance among its myriad sects, he must ensure that his own is well represented by someone with both a sufficiently modern outlook to want far-reaching change and the physical and mental vigor to obtain it. That person is far likelier to be found among the younger generation than that which brought us here.
By The Daily Star
Editorial
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=86820&categ_id=17
|
|
|
Madness takes over Lebanon.
Militants are fighting in the streets of Beirut. Military guns are on both sides. What is the prospect of such a situation. Aren't the Lebanese fed-up with wars?
23 November 2007
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud left the Baabda presidential palace without handing over the power to a new president. This is the first time since independence in 1943. |
advertisements
|
