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Reflections on independence
Becahra Khoury’s British
bornaita (hat), Riad Solh’s Turkish “tarboush” (fez) and Majid Arslan’s
“ba’akour” (stick) were not encouraging symbols to the enthusiastic student
eager to celebrate independence.
As days passed and the student read about those men commonly referred to, by the
Civic Education book, as heroes of independence, his enthusiasm faded away.
After the ‘Allies’ had settled their scores in Lebanon, the ‘French’ Emile Edde
was branded a traitor, and those who had been imprisoned in the Rachaya Fortress
for a few days became ‘heroes’.
As more days passed, the enthusiastic student read about the only martyr of the
independence, Said Fakhereddine, a soldier who was once left out of the history
book. Upon learning more about other martyrs such as those that faced the
Ottomans in World War I, he wondered why the names of the true heroes were
substituted with those of politicians. Instead of being an occasion for unity,
independence has become a source of divisions, and raising the flag to glorify
an ‘eternal’ Lebanon has served as a disguise for Christian confessionalism,
while Islamic confessionalism has been hiding behind the Palestinian and Arab
causes.
The enthusiastic student discovered (of course not from the ‘unified’ history
book or the one on civic education), the true meaning of independence.
Independence is not in the departure of an army from our land, nor in the
negative attitude towards ‘the other’, and it does not exist in the display of
symbols, but in our scale of values - when we lose those values or tip the
scale, we lose independence.
With time, we have failed to construct a society of knowledge and productivity
and have instead been transformed into single entities competing for money and
power. In the midst of that, we have lost that most precious treasure: freedom.
To that student, Lebanon was a beacon of light in the midst of tyrannical Arab
regimes. He also believed that where productivity and creativity exist, there is
freedom (and vice versa). The closer we are to those values, the brighter the
light.
Once the student came to realize this, he fell in love again with his country
and suddenly felt differently toward Bechara Khoury’s “bornaita”, Riad Solh’s ”
tarboush”, and Majid Arslan's “ba’akour”. He had wrongly condemned those people,
for the problem is not in the individuals, it is in the scale of values, he
discovered.
To quote the words of Gibran, written over 70 years ago:
“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion
Pity the nation that eats a bread it does not harvest
Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation”
More of Gibran’s words dawned on the student, especially those echoed by
Kennedy, that you should “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you
can do for your country”. Let us produce at all levels: agriculturally,
industrially, in arts and science, to become a society of knowledge, for only
then will we be independent and Lebanon can be what we aspire for it to be.
Jawad Adra
Managing Partner
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Current Statistics
Internal Security Forces (ISF)
• LL 855 million in undeclared costs (confidential) were spent by the ISF in 2003, out of which LL 450 million was the cost of undercover informants to trace and capture drug dealers.
Ministry of Education
• LL 642 million in fees were spent on supervising construction of the Ministry of Education’s new main building (in place of the old building in UNESCO), which will cost around LL 30 billion.
Department of Traffic and Motor Vehicles
• 369 is the number of permanent employees at the Department of Traffic and Motor Vehicles, which was established based on Decree No. 4092, issued 14 October 2000.
Delinquency projects
• LL 300 million was allotted to the Ministry of Social Affairs for projects to help prevent delinquency.
Lebanese University
• LL 2.4 billion was the cost of rehabilitating the Lebanese University’s public library and transferring it to the law school building in Sanayeh. The EU contributed 80% of the cost.
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