Lebanon is a small country – its population is fewer than 6 million. Still, as recently as the 1970s, it was punching far above its weight. It was known as the secure, and mountainous, “Switzerland of the Middle East. And its capital, Beirut, was known as the liberal, and fashionable, “Paris of the Middle East.” Which makes Lebanon’s vertiginous descent into rampant corruption and relentless chaos almost impossible to comprehend.
How did it happen? There are several reasons, of course, among them Lebanon’s malevolent neighbor, Syria, and, for more than two decades, its malevolent president, Bashar al-Assad. But no single explanation is as powerful as Lebanon’s own leadership class which, by wide agreement, has been an unmitigated disaster. By leadership class I refer specifically to its political and economic elites, both of which have been on the whole miserably inept – and atrociously corrupt.
They have been somewhat inept and corrupt since Lebanon’s inception in 1943. However, their power to wreak havoc has waxed and waned over the years, culminating only in recent years in such a disastrous lack of competence and rectitude that it sometimes seems hope is lost. The country’s infrastructure is crumbling. Inflation is out of control – in April it was almost 270%. There are electricity outages and water cuts. Garbage is piled in the streets and the environment is being degraded. The economy is stagnant if not crippled. Political unrest and civil disorder range from intermittent, to frequent, to constant. And at any given time, sectarian friction is on a continuum from dysfunctional to deadly.
Arguably no single leader personifies the overall wretchedness of Lebanon’s leadership class as vividly as does the former governor of its central bank, Riad Salameh. Salameh was governor for thirty years. He was repeatedly reappointed to his post by Lebanon’ Council of Ministers, each time for a six-year term. By the time he finally, just recently, exited his post, he was the world’s longest serving central banker.
For much of his tenure Salameh was praised for helping to steady his country during its frequent times of economic crisis. However, he is now being charged with a litany of financial crimes, for which he is being investigated in the United States and Europe, as well as in Lebanon. Salameh is accused of engaging in financial practices “to the detriment of the state.” They include money laundering, engaging in fiscal fraud, and embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. In addition to his personal corruption, he is now regarded not as Lebanon’s financial mastermind or, as he was sometimes known, as its “magician,” but as the architect of its misery. As the Financial Times (FT) recently noted, at the “root of the current rot” were decisions that Salameh had been making for years.
Which raises these questions. Why was he reappointed, over and over again, for three decades, to his post? Was everyone in Lebanon unable to see what was happening? Was the entirety of the political establishment and the rest of the financial establishment incapable of detecting either his obvious wrongdoing or his glaring stupidity? Or was their blindness, their collective blindness, willful, deliberate?
The above-mentioned piece leaves no doubt. It is widely assumed that Salameh will stay in Lebanon to avoid certain questioning and possible arrest abroad. “The arrangement suits Lebanon’s politicians.” Why? Because as one put it, “As long as Salameh stays here, he won’t squeal [on their secrets] and everyone stays happy.”
Everyone, that is, except the Lebanese people who have suffered too much and too long at the hands of those ostensibly responsible for their health and welfare. It is an astonishment that the antidote to bad leadership, sad leadership, remains so elusive.