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iloubnan.info: Where does your perseverance in political engagement come from?
Nicolas Sehnaoui: Maybe it comes from the fact that I have lived in this atmosphere since forever. My mother’s family has always developed a strong culture of engagement, be it at the social, political, or cultural levels; a kind of engagement that should absolutely be lived as well as working for the citizens’ interest, which is the only way that leads to the particular interests.
My maternal grandmother Evelyne Bustros, born Tueini, was a committed feminist and intellectual: she wrote La main d’Allah (the hand of Allah), that tackles the coexistence between Christians and Muslims. As an Arabist and secular person, she struggled for the freedom of women. She was a member of the Lebanese Cenacle and she walked ahead of the women who were protesting for independence in 1943.
Her father, Gerios Tueini, was the Wali of Beirut. He was against the mandatory power and he was the one who closed the city for three days. The Turkish people burned our house and he took refuge in Egypt to elude death.
My grandfather, Youssef El Hani, was hanged in the Cannon Square by the Ottomans.
My mother, Mouna Bustros, was very active in the social Movement and the Lebanese handcrafts with Grégoire Haddad. She left this world at 43 years old after the bombardments of Achrafieh by the Syrian Army in 1989.
My father was the Minister of Energy in the government of Karameh and he drew a plan for the electricity sector that remains a reference until today. My great-uncle Antoine was an MP in Beirut for three mandates between 1960 and 1968.
All this heritage of activism in social or political issues, is it a burden?
On the contrary, this is a heritage I am proud of. If it were a burden, it would surely have been a positive one because it imposes one of the most rigorous ethical standards. In any case, the culture of family is not a fatal conditioning because we decide to accept it as it is. I surely developed my own culture since my young age, a culture that consists in filtering and developing my own free arbiter. The ethical criteria and the citizens’ interest are part of the heritages I should preserve and even develop. To give back to Cesar what belongs to him, this capacity to free myself from social and cultural determinisms comes also from my father who was a precursor at this level.
Anyway, my own journey made me become also committed. From the age of 8 to 22, just like many Lebanese, I witnessed nothing but war. My whole childhood was filled with questions: why are we always forced to hide? Why are we attacked? Why are they destroying my house? ... My sufferings certainly made me determined to become an activist, then a role-player in the political life, to try to influence the evolution of things and not to observe them passively, or be subjected to them.
In the East, where we lived during the war, we were either sympathizers of the forces which controlled the region, or forced to remain silent. We did not have the right to disagree with what was happening. When General Aoun became the interim Speaker of Parliament, I felt that a hole was open to help us regain our way towards a democratic and independent country. He used to speak directly to the citizens. He used to grant us all the good signs; the flag, the State of Rights, the ethics, the sovereignty, and the rejection of sectarianism. He also introduced the nuance. That is what charmed me the most in him and that is how I have joined the FPM since 1989.
Were you in Paris at that time ?
Yes, I was studying Economics there. I lived in Paris from 1985 to 1993. In 1989, I founded “Loubnan”, an association that gathered people from all confessions. In fact, our slogan in this era was “My religion is Lebanon”. 1989 was also the year during which I joined the FPM. Two years later, I cofounded the Lebanese citizens’ movement, permeated with pure ideologies of sovereignty and citizenship. An avant-gardist movement joined by many important figures such as Georges Corm, Bourhane Alaouie, Ghassan Mkhaiber, Karim Kobeissi, and Ziad Baroud. We published a monthly magazine for five year in France, then for two years in Lebanon. In 1996, after the leaden weight of the occupation forces and the Hariri system on the country, we disbanded the movement and decided to devote ourselves to our respective careers, and once established, to go back to public stuff in order to improve our ideologies once again.
When did you decide to dive into the activist and political life again?
In 2004, when I started to perceive a change in the international policy and the regional movements. There was a chance for Lebanon to regain his sovereignty, and he was not supposed to miss it. All the energy of this era was heading towards this direction. We regained our sovereignty and that’s what we did on April 26 with the withdrawal of the last Syrian soldier. Since then, we believed that we needed to solve internal Lebanese problems of fair participation in institutions and social pact consolidation.
At this same moment, despite all these changes, nobody thought that the Christians could regain the level of a partner with full rights on the Lebanese scene. Moreover, some people hoped they could aspire to gain a pivot role between the two blocs. However, this is the case nowadays after the Doha agreement. Thanks to the unremitting efforts of General Aoun and the sacrifice he made in terms of the presidency, we gained an electoral law that allows a better representation. This departure point is fairer, for it allows playing a fairer game in the heart of the consensual democracy in which we are living.
You talked about the comeback of the Christian community on the political scene, but you are often opposed to confessionalism…
Yes because it poisons the political and the economic lives. It is a cancer that renders Lebanon void of its substance and bans him from becoming a modern and stable country; it even bans it from becoming just a country.
Nevertheless, in front of each situation, a politician has to judge the better way to opt for. Which way would minimize the negative consequences and maximize the positive impacts? What is the road map that has the chance to lead to a country in which we rationally turn around, even when our intentions are good and we don’t walk backwards?
It is obvious that the proportional is more favorable to the edification of modern parties and to the citizens’ integration. But each period dictates its approach. Nowadays, due to the loss of exacerbated confidence and the obvious community tensions, it is important to witness a period in which each community feels well represented and strengthened in a way that helps it make sure not to be deprived from power. Therefore, it is crucial to review and consolidate the national pact, which proved itself incapable of resisting the external pressures or constituting a crisis absorption mechanism. Once these steps are over, we will be able to urge the Lebanese to emigrate all together towards more modern and fairer mechanisms, which are essential to build a State of Rights. However, according to us, it is important to go step by step in order not to decrease the chances of achievement.
How are you planning to establish this confidence among communities?
By multiplying discussions, understanding documents, and written agreements between different parties; it is essential to promote the culture of writing because it decreases the impact of the shape at the expense of the content. And starting with the validation and the registration of common points between the bilateral and the multilaterals is already a big step forward. Of course there are many differences and it is good to list them and discuss them. We should get used to overcoming problems, because the concerns of some people in Lebanon, if they are denigrated, always affect the others.
Furthermore, it is important that each community feels economically at ease. Fundamentalism and extremism have more easily haunted the poor populations. If I were a Sunni from North Lebanon, for whom the State gives nothing, I would have been the target choice for any extremist ideology.
What should be done for the country’s economy?
Three major principles should be applied: first of all, we should start by agreeing on a viable economic model. Lebanon have lived with the “Hariri machine” for 15 years, a machine that operated according to a precise business model, which does not seem to be a good compromise for the Lebanese, for it casts ¾ of them on the side of the road. According to this model, Lebanon should depend on an economy of services. I have nothing against services, which are a real asset for Lebanon, but I think that it is a myth to let Lebanon depend exclusively on services; this cannot work! It is a simplistic and dangerous idea against which we should struggle. Cyprus for example is a high-touristic country, but in parallel, it developed its agricultural and industrial sectors, and Lebanon has not done that. Moreover, nowadays, Lebanon is financially supported: if 3.5 billion dollars are not injected by foreign countries every year, Lebanon’s debt cannot be settled. The Lebanese economy has to become productive and competitive.
What do you suggest in order to get out of this model?
We should start by changing our priorities. Nowadays, the priority is the monetary system. When the country has money he is directly indebted. This is impossible! We are giving priority to stockholders compared to what they produce.
The State must regain its position, by protecting us for example against the countries that subsidize their products. The government should make plans, not in the soviet sense, but in the “macroeconomic” sense. I don’t think that designing at the micro level which jobs are to succeed is the right thing to do in the public sector. It is about making director plans sector by sector, plans that take into consideration the objectives of competitiveness and resource economy. Two documents that could make a good basis are already in the administration: the 2006 CDR “Developement Program and Public Investment Planning over 10-15 years”, directed by Fadel Chalak and the National Land Use Master Plan (SDATL), drawn by the IAURIF and the CDR. Unfortunately, they were buried in the drawers of the administration because they are not in harmony with the prevailing model, namely the model which gives priority to the debt and to annuity.
You mentioned three principles? What are the two others?
The second is to take into consideration the underprivileged regions that cannot be served enough by the adopted economic model. Keeping them away from growth and job opportunities cannot but lead to protests, such as the ones of Fath El Islam and other Salafist movements operating nowadays in North Lebanon. The third principle is the rehabilitation of the State’s role. The socioeconomic pact implies that all the Lebanese, no matter what region they come from, should be taken into consideration. It is up to the state power to carry out a relative wealth redistribution at the expense of the forgotten people.
Concerning the State rehabilitation, it is an urgent case. Nowadays, nobody wants the State. It is understandable because they have got nothing from it. But here also I point at the Hariri period during which we witnessed a wide loss of credibility of the State. According to him, everything should have been privatized, like EDL for example. A governmental decision banned any appointment in it. Today, the age average of 2500 employees at EDL is 60 years old. A study made by EDF a few years ago estimated that the optimal number of employees for the good work flow of EDL is 4500. Therefore, now that EDL is not essentially doing well, everybody wants to privatize it! Another example is MEA. It is doing very well although it still belongs to the State, which proves that the public companies can succeed if good conditions are available. I don’t mean that we should never privatize but we should resist to the idea that the State should go back to its minimal form and to the illusion that we could let go.
The State assumes vital responsibilities for the society like the redistribution and the arbitrage between the private interests. Those who fight for the notion of a minimum State probably do not realize that they are weakening the Lebanese entity and rushing its ending.
It is probably the systematic lamination of the middle class that is leading to the erosion of the State concept in Lebanon. In all the countries, this concept is the one that holds the project of the State and the Nation. We should absolutely create it once again.
Are you planning to run for the 2009 parliamentary elections for Beirut 1 constituency?
Now that Achrafieh can elect its own representatives without any foreign political interference in this region, it is a possibility that I am seriously thinking about.
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