What Lebanon needs is the will - and therein lies the rub

Lebanon needs a jump-start for its economic activity, Michael Karam writes. And where there's a will there's a way. But finding the will is the challenge.

Lebanon's 25-year power crisis costs US$1.5 billion annually in lost business, according to some estimates. Ramzi Haidar / AFP

The renowned Lebanese-Palestinian banker Yusuf Beidas said that Lebanon is to money what the Suez Canal is to shipping. The Lebanese may not be good at laying the foundations for a properly functional society but we are dab hands at husbanding our dollars and gold bars.

So when François Bassil, the chairman of Byblos Bank, says Lebanon could "do" a Greece unless the government faces up to its priorities, Lebanon's ministers should stop playing solitaire at cabinet sessions (yes, we all know what those laptops are really for) and pay attention.

Mr Bassil, talking to the local media this week, cited Lebanon's woeful national power grid as one - heaven knows there are dozens - of the potential catalysts for a falling apart.

He estimated that our 25-year power crisis costs Lebanon US$1.5 billion (Dh5.5bn) annually in lost business and needs to be corrected if we are to fight our way out of a national debt that is due to reach $60bn this year.

Simply, economic activity needs to be jump-started, not least because the state has approved a rise in the minimum wage (ranging from $116 to $199 a month), which if not matched by output will cause inflation to increase. A reported 25 per cent drop in tourist activity for last year has not helped matters.

Another Bassil, Gebran, the energy minister, has a plan. He says he needs $1.2bn, but the prime minister, Najib Mikati, and his finance minister and fellow Tripoli Sunni, Mohammed Safadi, say the government is not willing to borrow more because that will just increase the budget deficit.

There is history to this stand-off. Early last year, Mr Mikati tried his best, where he could, to create a government of honest technocrats and was reluctant to appoint Gebran Bassil, a member of Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), whose previous term as telecommunications minister was blighted with rumours of corruption.

Hizbollah, which effectively runs the country, said on Monday that the party supports the FPM in any position it takes regarding the cabinet dispute.

Ghaleb Abou Zeinab, a Hizbollah spokesman, even said that "if the FPM decided to resort to street action to achieve Lebanon's interest, then we will join it as well".

So the government is attacking the government. Shades of Kafka? Well you wouldn't be wrong, but there is also method to this most Lebanese madness.

Hizbollah is not happy with the way the plot is developing. The Party of God brought down the government of Saad Hariri in January last year because Hizbollah's priority was to do away with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the court created to find the killers of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, which has indicted four Hizbollah members.

Mr Mikati, who, to be fair, is cut from more honest cloth than most of his colleagues, has stuck by Lebanon's commitment and the court is proceeding as planned.

If Hizbollah wants to muddy the political waters with outrage, it needs that arch toy-from-pram thrower Michel Aoun to fight its corner.

The FPM leader, who gives Hizbollah a degree of Christian cover, still dreams of the presidency and thinks he can get it with a show of principled stubbornness when it comes to Lebanon's best interests - in this case 24-hour electricity.

Either way, the state does need to act now. There has been no investment in the electricity sector since the late 1990s and the country still generates only about half of its total needs.

The idea that Mr Mikati thinks Mr Bassil will award contacts to his cronies is worrying, but then again so is his hesitation, especially when there are many viable and affordable mechanisms to solve the problem.

What is needed is the will. And therein lies the rub.

Michael Karam is associate editor in chief of Executive, a Lebanese regional business magazine

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