A Year Bearing its Marker

If 2020 were a TV show, the first draft would be terrible. what kind of show would it be? It could be a comedy, tragedy, thriller, political, drama, medical procedural, fiction, horror, or all of those rolled into one.  what happens when political disfunction meets a deadly virus? Like it or not, we’re barreling toward the final episode, and no one knows what’s going to happen. Will there be a satisfying ending? Or one of those unsettling, vague ones? Will it be an ending at all?

This is a year we want to forget, but we will not.

Just over the first six months of this year, we knew it would be a benchmark year. It has cost us a summer of pleasure, of travel and of living life the way we want with our treasured freedom. We have missed out on concerts, parties, ceremonies and gathering in groups. We have set aside handshakes, kisses on the cheek and big hugs.

When the academic year began in Fall 2019, few would have predicted the changes in classroom routines and the early closing of schools. All-but-essential businesses closed, people were asked to stay home, and health providers and researchers around the world urgently sought to hinder the spreading of COVID-19. The changes to our way of life have been rapid. Terms surrounding the coronavirus, such as Zoom, contactless, quarantine, epidemic curve, to name a few, came into common usage and were added to dictionaries.

Some have dearly felt the personal pain of loved ones dying alone in the hospital, as family does not dare to go near. Some have endured the difficulty of losing a job deemed non-essential, left to pray for any financial help to fill the void. Some have missed unity with their God, their physical lifestyle at gyms or their sense of belonging to real groups; even if Zoom have filled this gap, but in a different perspective than physical presence.

Talking about the pandemic is a major topic covered by all journals around the world and still, people are waiting for the vaccines that, as per health organizations, are in the final stage of being tested on samples. But another calamity has been in the spots, not a major problem for almost all countries, but for us, Lebanese, it is a crisis as crucial as Covid-19.

It all started a year ago with the revolution of October 2019; but the explosion of the fourth of August 2020 has changed everything; it had struck a debilitated country that had already been hit by a wide range of crises before this one. The situation for people in Lebanon was not quite easy; with huge sovereign debt of over 160 per cent of gross domestic product that was weighing down on the country, a concoction of delayed reforms, corruption, deficits in the budget and government trying to curb the spread of the coronavirus but at the same time mired in an unprecedented economic and financial crisis. Even banks, once the pride of the country, went into turmoil and chaos, dollars were scarce, and the government’s fiscal scope was becoming increasingly tight. The economy in Lebanon was in fact a Ponzi Scheme, based on its participants’ confidence in the solvency and liquidity of the scheme. When one of those pillars breaks down, that is when the system collapses, and can last a long time.

Conspiracy theories about who is responsible for the August 4 blast have been placed in craters and left behind from every point in the political spectrum. But eventually, those who died or let’ say “who were killed”, were murdered by the negligence of their state.

When I mentioned that the explosion has changed everything, I meant not just deteriorated the economy, but also resulted in the virus beginning to spread again in an almost uncontrollable manner, after the Lebanese people started to believe that they were getting the virus on a tight rein when the first lockdown was imposed, and the number of infections had fallen to almost zero in July. And then, the explosion pushed that number up, new record highs are being announced daily, a second lockdown was forced; however, people currently have other things to worry about than social distancing or protective masks. 

Poverty rate have soared to over 50 percent, the economy continued to weaken and pushed thousands of small businesses towards bankruptcy and political instability is now stronger than ever; however, the explosion had brought people closer together with volunteers from all over the world began reconstructing the capital without any support from any authority.

The question is whether the latest rebuild can be done along non-political lines, where the Lebanese people can have a sense of being invested in the outcome. 2020 is the year we survived a fatal pandemic. Most of us. Remembering the millions who have not. People ask if we can just skip ahead to next year. I don’t know where to locate such a fast forward button, but will 2021 hold a better promise? It looks like it must be better, right? But that’s not always the way decades work, is it?

If 2020 were a TV show as I have pretended it to be in the beginning, just to ease it up on us, then I guess we are almost at the last episode. So many endings to this show could be left with the reader’s imaginations. Was it just a dream? I wish it were, with the camera pulling back to reveal that the hospital drama took place inside a snow globe and was perhaps the figment of an autistic child’s inspiration; but against the backdrop of Covid-19 and the undoubted challenges to communities, especially Lebanon’s economy, I am a great believer that things will be better by time and recovery will deliver improved outcomes.  

A transition to the next normal, in whatever form that takes, isn’t just a matter of time; it’s above all, an issue of trust and confidence in the system and the society as a whole; especially the Lebanese government. In addition, there is the concern of our health and the wellbeing of others around us that we are now facing with Covid-19. Gaining that confidence requires hard work from the government and the people of this society; and when confidence is restored, businesses will reopen their doors again, recruit new staff, people will again fill bars, restaurants, theaters, and sports venues to full capacity; fly overseas and LIVE.

The timing of such transition to normalcy will depend on Us and the Lebanese society. We will need to see a significant progress on all its levels, as they are all interdependent on one another.

The last two years have left millions unemployed. It has brought a burden of debt that will last for many years. It has brought new pressures on our social cohesion. It has also exposed some fundamental truths about the challenges that the Lebanese economy faces. And in the meantime, the global economy is moving forward. How our society responds will determine our future.

The crisis is a wake-up call, the moment where we recognize that "business as usual" would consign us to a gradual decline in rank, especially when corruption permeates all levels of our society.

Our short-term priority is a successful exit from the crisis. It will be difficult for some time yet, we will get there. Significant progress has been made on dealing with corrupted people and businesses; but then again, a sustainable future demands us to look beyond the short term. Lebanon needs to get back on track. Then it must stay on track. It's about offering a sense of direction to our society.

2021 must mark a new beginning. Lessons to be learned from the crisis, but also challenges to be faced wisely. We have talented workforce, powerful industries and businesses and a robust technological base to hand in the shape of an advanced economic governance, supported by our once known “Solid Banking System”. We must have confidence in our ability to set an ambitious agenda for ourselves and then gear our efforts to delivering it. Our new agenda requires coordination between the people and their society. If we act together, then we can fight back and come out of the crisis stronger. We need to make it happen, for us, for Lebanon and the next generation.