Monday, March 14, 2011
Editorial

Sunday’s gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters of the March 14 coalition turned out to be a civilized display of how robust democracy functions, regardless of how one feels about the content of the views espoused on Martyrs Square.

The organizers and demonstrators deserve a word of praise for hewing to an apparently unmarred program of lawful and well mannered speech and behavior. A great deal of praise also accrues to the country’s security forces, from the police to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), who deftly managed a potentially volatile situation. As anyone who encountered one of the many checkpoints erected Sunday can attest, the soldiers of the LAF could hardly have been more polite.

As for the rally itself, it amounted mostly to further proof that Lebanon remains deeply split. That, however, was not news – this polarized fracture has plagued the country for almost six years without pause, as well as at far too many other times in Lebanon’s fraught history.

What needs to be said today, then, is that Lebanon is in dire need of its political class addressing this dangerous fissure through negotiation and dialogue. To be sure, Sunday’s assembly featured some combative rhetoric which only highlighted the glaring differences between the country’s rival political blocs.

Such verbal jousting, though, represents the nature of democracy in Lebanon. One can hardly expect this nation’s myriad constituencies to be in utter harmony over the country’s political orientation. The next step, though, requires that the political adversaries proceed from the street to the negotiating table for dialogue, where they must seek out common ground and make difficult compromises instead of scoring rhetorical points.

The people of Lebanon should, in the end, only welcome such displays of democratic competition as we witnessed Sunday, but only as long as the utmost priority of the opposing groups remains the fight to improve the country. If political parties want to vie for the public’s backing based on programs to foster the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon, then this would be the battle that the nation’s largely untrammeled political freedoms have long sought to foster. 

If the March 14 and March 8 camps are able to confront one another solely through democratic means – through rallies and dialogue – and based on slogans and programs with specific measures and policies, then more demonstrations such as Sunday’s should only be greeted warmly. The speakers on Martyrs Square repeated the words independence, freedom and sovereignty like mantras, but those concepts need to serve as everyone’s exclusive guideposts in creating a political agenda.