It all started three months ago, when the mounting trash crisis in the capital, Beirut, stirred the action of the Lebanese society who has always been labeled as apathetic to government related issues. The people have awakened from a lethargic sleep and are fighting tooth and nail for their basic prerogatives. Lebanon has, by far, bit more than it can chew with an all-out sectarian war raging in neighboring Syria, with a widespread refugee crisis as repercussions and a presidential vacuum for the last sixteen months.
This time they cannot blame Israel, Saudi Arabia or Hezbollah, favorite targets for all woes. This time the matter concerns every Lebanese citizen who has been oblivious of the corruption that is lying at the core of the functioning of the system for the past twenty years. The manifestations and the protestors’ diligence will surely not be dismissed as an urban myth.
For all those past years, the people were treating the symptoms not the causes of a national mental emergency. Now they finally understood that their health and the country’s destiny are at stake.
Co-founder and Secretary General of the CLDH (Lebanese Center for Human Rights) and human rights activist since 1996, Wadih Al-Asmar, had a few words to say regarding the prevailing situation in Lebanon. As a protagonist and a fervent supporter of the “You Stink!” movement, acknowledges that “for the first time since the breaking of the civil war in the 70s, Lebanon witnesses manifestations of this kind, of this size. Manifestations characterized for being inter-religious, transregional and trans-historical, which have on the basis of requests non-political claims.” He resumes by adding, “We are not addressing sectorial issues which are directly linked to a Lebanese group in specific, so I believe, in this respect, that we were able to achieve a huge success. As a matter of fact, thirteen people only were engaged in the first manifestation on August 22nd, and in a month time the number of the protestors jumped to tens of thousands of people.” Al-Asmar stresses on the importance of the diversity of the people involved in this movement, he says: “There are activists from the left and the right wing Party, and others from both the Liberal and the Conservative Party.” It is, in fact, the blending of all kinds of people with different ideology which constitutes a unifying power to fight for one specific cause.
Concerning the question of whether or not the mobilizing of the Lebanese society did help find a sober resolution for the garbage crisis issue, the protagonist answered that due to these manifestations the government was somehow forced to search for a “less dangerous” solution for the Lebanese citizens. “We haven’t reached a solution yet, but I think we are closer now to finding one than we were three months ago” he confirms.
In the course of observing the evolvement of the waste landfills issue, it would be quite impossible not to notice the worms that have entered the system letting the rot set in, blocking every form of progress in the Chehayyeb trash plan. In this context, when asked for his opinion on why the Chehayyeb plan is still facing obstacles, Al-Asmar replied with no hesitation: “The problem is that there is still no accurate Chehayyeb plan. Chehayyeb introduced what I call a “wish list”. He presented for action a marvelous plan with its grand outlines. However, he did not succeed in convincing the people of his plan. There is something missing that we are not able to see so we can’t invest our trust in it.”
The fate of the country is juggling between the hands of Lebanese political parties, who their main interest rotates around the ways on how to outdo one another culturally, politically and fiscally. After having to deal years with Lebanon’s sectarian issues and inequitable division of the powers the silence of its citizens has broke into riotous and endless waves of transformation.
The future of the “You Stink!” movement remains a mystery. Al-Asmar made it crystal clear that he has no definite answer when inquired how he envisions the movement in the upcoming years. After all the movement is still an embryo created three months ago, therefore, they are still exploring who they can be and what can they do to implement change. “The group’s main goal is to transform this movement into a non-political citizen movement who will keep on working to find a solution for the garbage crisis and who will later on tackle other issues in order to come forward and form a government that will meet the people’s needs”, he recapitulates.
