The Constitutive Act

Contents: Preamble · For a New Political Compact · In the State and Institutions: Reconciliation and Reform · For a New Economic–Social Compact · A Window on the Future: An Economy of Modernity and Justice · For a New Compact with Our Arab Environment and the World · Conclusion

Preamble

Ten years after the end of the Lebanese war, the work of rebuilding the nation, the state, society and the economy remains stalled, and day by day the saying gains ground: the war has ended, but a genuine civil peace has not yet been achieved. What is troubling is that the causes of Lebanon’s incomplete recovery are not confined to the sheer scale of the tasks facing the Lebanese; they extend to people’s sense that a large part of those responsible for their present and their future do not grasp the weight of the historic responsibility placed upon them. Hence the Lebanese conviction that their country — exhausted by fifteen years of destructive wars and strife — has had added to its wounds the burden of ten post-war years: a period that, for all its positive aspects, leaves a negative balance in the general Lebanese consciousness, as though it had not been used to reflect on and learn from the country’s past eras so as to lay the ground for a conscious, steady and confident start towards a promising future long awaited.

It is precisely from this — from the painful and full awareness of the sacrifices the Lebanese have made and continue to make, from complete certainty about their hopes and aspirations, and from a reasoned acknowledgement of both the difficulty and the necessity of the work — that the Democratic Renewal Movement sets out, offering itself as a unifying, reformist choice and a free collective framework for political action for a better future for Lebanon.

Any political project in Lebanon today must also understand and absorb the vast transformations that have taken place in the world and in the nature of international relations, as well as the structural changes in our society and in the Arab world and its surrounding region. As we set out, therefore, we affirm that we will work to define the constants on which Lebanese society rests, in order to modernise and strengthen them: by stressing the priority of belonging to Lebanon and the importance of Muslim–Christian coexistence and the pluralism inseparable from it; by deepening and widening Lebanese unity; and by building an economy of modernity and justice and expanding the middle class that shelters civil peace and democracy. We also affirm that we will seek to help develop and enrich a democratic, open and pioneering Arabism, and to bring Lebanon into the new world taking shape before our eyes by developing and adapting the concept of modernity within it, so as to enable the structures of the nation and society to meet the new challenges.

The Democratic Renewal Movement further affirms that its contribution will not be confined to direct political action — the self-evident expression of any political movement — but will extend, first, to engaging in the frameworks and mechanisms of cultural and intellectual activity that produce the new visions and ideas supporting and strengthening this course; and, second, to the frameworks and mechanisms of a civil society that embraces these values and ideas and works to mobilise people’s energies and their involvement in managing their own affairs and in taking part in national and local public life.

For a New Political Compact

In Lebanese society: the meaning of Lebanon’s existence, freedom and unity

The meaning of Lebanon’s existence rests on the idea of freedom on the one hand and the idea of the unity of its people on the other. What nourishes and shelters the idea of freedom is Lebanon’s attachment to its openness — as environment, method and horizon for its constant movement — and also its pluralism, an essential component of the Lebanese chemistry made up of religious, regional, cultural and other diversities. The idea of unity, which serves no purpose if it is artificial or coercively imposed, has suffered repeated tremors that have put, and still put, the fate of the Lebanese nation at stake.

The Movement proceeds from the premise that Lebanese pluralism — including sectarian diversity — is a historical and social given, inherited and accumulated over time; and from an understanding of sectarianism as a societal system that produced a specific political structure, which was itself turned into constitutional and legal text. It also proceeds from the premise that the sectarian distortions of this pluralism have at several stages been the basis for numerous imbalances, a source of disintegration in the unity of the nation’s people and in the foundations of its sovereignty — quite apart from their role in aborting any citizenship project and their rising cost to the structure of the economy and the effectiveness of the state.

On the basis of this composite approach, the Movement holds that the problem of sectarianism cannot be reduced to the slogans of “entrenchment” or “abolition” to which Lebanese political life usually reduces it, nor addressed through a one-sided approach that ignores the other levels — that is, addressing political sectarianism without treating the sectarian question as a whole, or approaching the Lebanese individual solely through their sectarian component in isolation from their other components.

In other words, the Movement is aware of the depth of the sectarian reality and its ramifications in every field of life, yet at the same time it does not resign itself to its current political and societal consequences. It therefore aspires to be one of the non-sectarian poles seeking to modernise and develop our political life by deepening Lebanese unity as, ultimately, a compact among free individuals. Only the building of a non-sectarian pole, distinct from every sectarian project, is the true guarantee and the essential instrument on the path to overcoming sectarianism and building a citizens’ society.

Hence, under the present sectarian system and within the ceiling of the Constitution, the Movement will contribute — through its positions and practices — to offering alternative citizenship choices, and will determine its stance on projects aimed at abolishing sectarianism not in the light of declared slogans alone, but by assessing the likely consequences of these projects for the desired goal, which is always to safeguard and deepen national unity, leading to genuine citizenship.

In the state and institutions: reconciliation and reform

The Lebanese political dilemma has roots in two directions: the pact and consensus dimension on one side, and the constitutional and institutional dimension on the other. Activating the Lebanese pact of common coexistence and strengthening its components are at the heart of daily political action in a country like Lebanon — a constant, continuous act. The idea of reconciliation, on the basis of which the Lebanese war ended, remains the essential pillar of this achievement. The meanings of this reconciliation, which is not yet complete, are many: the reconciliation of people with themselves; of the nation with the memory of its citizens; of people with one another; of society with the state; of the political forces with one another; and of everyone with the concept of politics as the sole hoped-for framework for changing reality for the better, resolving disputes, organising differences and activating competition. The Movement therefore calls on all to devote themselves to achieving this reconciliation by taking the long-awaited steps to close the chapter of the war for good and clear away the residue of a hateful past.

The other face of strengthening Lebanese society concerns the idea of reform and the distortions that have affected this concept in recent years. From the moment of its founding, the Movement places itself among those who consider that the National Accord Document (the Taif Agreement) provided a sound starting point for building an inclusive state in post-war Lebanon, despite the distorted way it was applied. All political forces — and especially the living forces in Lebanese society — must therefore understand the philosophy of this document so as to apply its spirit and its texts, as a prelude to developing its mechanisms to suit the requirements of the healthy political life we wish to revive. The Movement considers that one of the essential pillars for beginning to set things right is to focus on the mechanisms that produce institutions and political elites, and to give women and young people the greatest possible opportunities to take part in public affairs, so as to end a full decade of distortion of political representation in Lebanon and to begin drafting a fair electoral law that ensures the effective participation and expressive, undistorted representation of every segment of the Lebanese people.

The Movement does not overlook that the other essential pillar of any renewed political compact among the Lebanese is the task of safeguarding freedoms in all their forms, as the framework for the life of the Lebanese, without which Lebanon’s vital foundations cease to exist. There is no true democracy, no genuine political compact and no accomplished political reform without absolute preservation of the frameworks of public-sphere activity and free political movement under the ceiling of fair and objective laws — because freedom of public action is the only alternative to violence in political discourse and action. The democracy our Movement proclaims — as slogan, method and faith — cannot stand upright without strong immunity granted to freedom as a concept and to the individual and collective freedoms enshrined in international covenants, and without full respect for the human rights of everyone residing on Lebanese soil.

The democracy the Movement works to strengthen and protect in Lebanon is certainly an institutional system based on elections at every level, on accountability, on rotation of power, on the separation of powers and on an independent judiciary. But it is also a political culture and an integrated conduct founded on the right to differ, on freedom of opinion, on regarding dialogue as an indispensable method for understanding others’ concerns and aspirations, and on the majority’s safeguarding of the rights of the minority and its protection from the whims of power.

For a New Economic–Social Compact

Learning the lessons of the past

Adopting the choice of a market economy and openness to the outside gave Lebanon great opportunities for growth and expansion and secured for it essential economic roles and functions at home and in the Arab region. But taking this choice to an extreme, together with the weakness of the state’s regulatory role, deepened social, regional and sectoral disparities and tensions. These imbalances helped pave the way for the destructive war and combined with it to produce a severe monetary crisis that ran from the early 1980s to the early 1990s and expressed the limits of the economic formula and its inability to renew itself and endure — especially in the light of the deep changes in the rules of the global economy and the structure of the regional economy. At the end of the war, then, Lebanon faced two challenges: reconstruction and readjustment.

Instead of confronting this double challenge and learning from it, the post-war governments surrendered to the ease of repetition, embarked on rebuilding the very same model, and confined their role to two tasks only: stabilising the currency through high interest rates, and rehabilitating infrastructure. This was done without adequate planning, without clear priorities, in the absence of any real growth and at an exorbitant cost that raised the public debt — and hence its service — to levels exhausting for the treasury, the economy and society alike. That cost was multiplied many times over by the backward political formula that arose after the war, which inflated the size of the administration and the public sector at the expense of the idea of the state and stuffed it with cronies and hangers-on.

In short, the combination of post-war economic policies with the decay of the body of the state, the administration and the public sector — accumulating on top of the destruction caused by the war and the pre-war structural imbalances, and the failure to keep pace with developments in the world economy — all led to the replacement of the earlier monetary crisis by a present financial crisis, compounded by a stifling economic crisis and a social and living crisis.

Halting the current slide: breaking the cycle of debt and deficit

Under the heading of moving from a state of favouritism to a state of citizens, the Movement holds that returning the state to a natural size must be accompanied by modernising and restructuring it and increasing the effectiveness of the administrations and institutions that will remain in its charge. Privatisation must go hand in hand with creating mechanisms to absorb the surplus of the public sector into the private sector through training and vocational retraining; with concern for transparency and fair competition among companies; with broadening ownership of the shares of privatised companies among the widest possible segment of citizens; and with the delivery of services to citizens at fair prices. The effectiveness of these measures, however, remains contingent on their coinciding with one another, with a further package of social safety nets, and with a sound political and judicial environment that sends the positive signals needed to encourage investment and secures the national consensus and fairness required to absorb and distribute the social burdens accompanying such a transformation.

A Window on the Future: An Economy of Modernity and Justice

The Movement believes that building an economy of modernity and justice — effective and healthy — requires adopting the following general orientations:

1. A positive engagement with globalisation: preparing to integrate into the world economy while taking care to cushion the shocks and ease the resulting social cost, and fortifying against this through Arab regional economic integration.
2. Centring the economy on human capital arising from quality, purposeful education, and on diversity and balance among sectors — with a focus on carving out a fitting share of the expanding Arab information and communications market, and on renewing and reshaping Lebanon’s regional financial and service role in the light of the new changes, through a competitive, quality-based industry, agriculture and tourism that draw increasingly on the knowledge and technology component and on modern methods of organisation and management, and on making the fullest use of the Lebanese diaspora’s capacities.
3. Renewing Lebanon’s social capital through an education policy that develops the education system in all its branches, stages and sectors — especially the public school and the Lebanese University, which carry an essential national and civic function beyond their educational role — and through a modern health policy that moves beyond the current high-cost, low-effectiveness and low-fairness reality towards sound health coverage for all Lebanese.
4. Giving the environment and environmental balance central attention in every aspect of public policy and in civic awareness, in order to repair the destruction Lebanon’s natural environment has suffered, through a comprehensive national plan for managing natural resources, land use and urban planning, and for curbing migration to the city.
5. Giving primacy to the principle of a social market economy — a modern liberalism with effective safeguards and social and regional transfer and redistribution systems, in which the state plays a strong regulatory, legislative, oversight and social role that stimulates the productivity of the private sector, without owning the means of production except exceptionally and for strategic and vital reasons, and in which municipalities and other local authorities play a similarly broad role, particularly in public services, land-use planning and preserving environmental balance.
6. Embodying that principle by giving small and medium enterprises a growing role in the national economy; a larger share for women and young people in the labour market; opening every region to investment, work and residence through a comprehensive development plan; activating sectoral associations and trade unions and modernising their structures and negotiating roles; expanding the middle class so that it forms the majority in society and plays its role as a social safety valve; strengthening social protection systems; and providing basic care for the weak and marginalised while working steadily to integrate them economically and socially.

For a New Compact with Our Arab Environment and the World

On Arabism and Lebanon’s role in shaping a new modernity

The Movement is fully convinced of Lebanon’s belonging to the Arab world — as a historical, geographical, cultural, human and economic depth — while respecting the independence, sovereignty and specificity of every Arab state. The Movement therefore works for Lebanon to play an active, present role in establishing rules for equal and democratic dealing among all Arab states, so as to reach the highest degrees of cooperation, solidarity and interaction among these states and among their civil societies, at every level, especially the economic and cultural.

In foreign relations and globalisation

Among the reasons for caution in embarking on a project to renew politics in Lebanon is that such a project coincides with vast global transformations that are now shaking the core of societies and states in many parts of the world. The end of an era in contemporary world history and the fading of ideological systems oblige the Movement to follow these transformations closely and to rely on a composite approach capable of distinguishing between the dangers arising from the emerging unipolar world and the reactions to it, on one hand, and the opportunities offered by the accelerating scientific and technological revolutions, on the other.

Lebanon — rich in its pluralist heritage and its tireless quest to reconcile unity and diversity, rich too in the active and distinctive spread of its people across the world, and able to absorb incoming developments — has an essential role to play in its contemporary world. In this context, the Movement offers itself as a force of modernity and modernisation in Lebanese society, so as to work with the other cultural and civil forces to prevent the marginalisation of Lebanon in this new emerging reality, and to prevent the marginalisation of those, in Lebanon and the world, who are not adept at dealing with it.

Conclusion

The far goal of the Democratic Renewal Movement is to contribute to establishing a new political culture based on rooting democracy through widening and renewing Lebanese unity, through the full recovery of land and sovereignty, and through entrenching the foundations of modernity and justice in our society. The ambition and the destiny of the Movement is to be a miniature image of Lebanese society in its diversity and of the Lebanese citizen in their capacities. Today, the Movement wishes — with all humility but with total determination — to give the young people of Lebanon a realistic basis for remaining in it, and to enable all its people to take genuine part in producing their present and determining their fate. The project the Movement offers the Lebanese is truly ambitious, yet realistic — realistic because it is necessary, and because there is no longer any alternative to working together.