Since Thursday, Lebanon is paralyzed by demonstrations of unprecedented scale, against the corruption that gangreans the political class. Lebanese, from all sides, are hundreds of thousands to claim in a festive atmosphere a radical change of a system accused of confessionalism and clientelism, against a background of economic crisis without end.
The Lebanese crowd is fighting in the streets to denounce corruption. Part of the government has already resigned, and Prime Minister Saad Hariri threatens to do the same if his reform plan is not adopted urgently. All this has a scent of revolution ...
It is not spring, it is a Lebanese Toussaint that the protesters expect. They want to bury a regime in agony, unable to curb the economic crisis. Everything started Thursday a tax imagined by the Minister of Telecoms, Mohamed Choucair. He wanted to make pay 18 euros for those who use Whatsapp, ie those who communicate with the family in the distance, ie all Lebanese. Tax users of a free email, even the geniuses of Bercy, world champions of tax inventiveness, had not thought.
Mohamed Choucair who studied in Paris dared, and for good reason: bankruptcy threat. The Lebanese debt is the third in the world, 86 billion dollars. His tax would have paid 200 million, but the bad languages have immediately suspected of wanting to divert a part.
You say that talking about a corrupt minister in Lebanon is almost a pleonasm ...
The Lebanese support for 50 years the water and power cuts, that Beirut stinks garbage and that ministers live like war profiteers. The friendly countries of Lebanon have pledged billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure in exchange for reforms. But the bickering between politicians blocked everything.
The Lebanese are furious but the Lebanese state they denounce is missing. The only real power still standing is that of Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militia. For the first time, its offices were burned Sunday by the protesters.