INTERVIEW
Four days after the double explosion that destroyed the port of Beirut and left more than 150 dead, thousands of Lebanese planned to demonstrate on Saturday against the political class, whom they held responsible for the disaster. The day before, Lebanese President Michel Aoun rejected any international investigation and raised the hypothesis of an external cause, such as a "missile". For Ziad Majed, professor at the American University of Paris and guest of Europe 1, on Saturday, such a position is "very revealing of the mentality that governs Lebanon".
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"A mediocre president, disconnected from reality"
He is "a president disconnected from reality, mediocre, always seeking to victimize himself and show that he has no share of responsibility, although he has been in the presidential palace of Baabda since 2016", launches the Franco researcher - Lebanese, at the microphone of Europe 1. According to him, "there is a will of the political class to say 'we are not responsible for the misfortune of the Lebanese', or to look for conspiracy theories by going into battle against the international community, "he denounces. "This same international community at whose door Lebanon is knocking to ask for money because [Lebanese officials] looted the country, and the mismanagement of the Lebanese state caused bankruptcy and emptied the coffers of the state. "
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Thursday, Emmanuel Macron, the first foreign head of state to go there after the double explosion that devastated part of the Lebanese capital, called for an international investigation into the causes of this disaster. This request was declined the next day by Michel Aoun, anxious to reaffirm the sovereignty of his country, even mentioning the possibility of an external attack.
For Ziad Majed, "there is a certain media consumption to show that he embodies the sovereignty of the State and wishes to protect and defend it". However, while Emmanuel Macron was greeted by the Lebanese in the streets of Beirut, Michel Aoun, "if he had been in his place, would have been attacked and insulted by the crowd as was the case with his ministers", adds the professor, a specialist in the Middle East, specifying that no politician has, since the tragedy, visited the wounded in hospitals. "They know the anger of the majority of the Lebanese, so playing the sovereignty card is extremely ridiculous."
"That they release" and "be prosecuted"
In order to organize the reconstruction of the region of the port of Beirut and those affected by the double explosion, an international conference is scheduled for Sunday. This is not to mention the country's economic recovery plan, specifies Ziad Majed, who insists on the need to put everything in place to "bypass the system of patronage that has lasted in Lebanon for decades", and so that "this humanitarian aid arrives directly to hospitals and civil society organizations, or else under the supervision of the international community".
Until then, the Lebanese will meet again in the street on Saturday, chanting the same slogans as those heard at the start of the protest movement against political leaders, at the end of 2019. But this time, Ziad concludes Majed, the Lebanese want not only "that they release", but "that they also be brought to justice for this last crime which they committed because of their irresponsibility".