I don’t care about who ends up president.
I don’t care about the presidency to begin with, but I do understand that the seat becoming vacant, which it probably will for the second time in a row, will indicate how utterly fucked up our political system is. It’s okay though, no one expects otherwise.
But after the first round of presidential elections, the only question I want to ask is: why the hell are we not voting for the president? Why are some of those parliament “members” voting for who will pretend to lead the country for the next 6 years?
There was a moment there, just before they starting counting the ballots, that I realized how underwhelming our elections actually are. Many didn’t even know our parliament was voting today. Many others didn’t care, and quite honestly why would anyone want to bother when we all know exactly how silly of a charade we were going to have to watch?
Yes, our elections are massively underwhelming because we – as people – are massively irrelevant as we await the main heads directing our parliamentary blocks to get their OK president from their country of political origin.
I expected the presidential vote to be predictable, indicative of how big of a joke our self-anointed parliament actually is. What I did not expect however is for our parliament to reveal itself as the combo of civil war-hung up people whose maturity range is that of a fourteen year old who has yet to hit puberty and whose IQ is that of a whale, with all respect to whales in all their forms.
I don’t mind blank papers. I couldn’t care less about Samir Geagea’s name being cast 48 times. Good for him. It’s not like he will ever win. What I do mind, however, is for some parliament members to be so spiteful, degrading, loathing and so utterly immature and irresponsible that they’d cast votes for civil war victims who have been allegedly killed by Samir Geagea back in the day, as if anyone knows who killed whom in our civil war, but everyone gets to be the expert, of course, in typical Lebanese fashion.
As I heard the names of Jihane Frangieh, Rachid Karami and whatnot being read out loud, I felt sad because there’s someone in parliament who is legislating on my behalf (or not) who actually thought it was a good idea to cast such a ballot. I felt sad because what is supposed to be a round of a presidential vote ended up becoming a gathering of kindergarten children in playtime.
Of course, such an opinion of Geagea exists in the Lebanese populace. But this is not the Lebanese populace. This is a parliament that should hold the minimum levels of professionalism when faced with a task of choosing who the country’s president will be. Parliament is not a place for such votes, no matter how poetic some people want to spin it.
Why are those people voting for my president again? What kind of system is this that gives people like them the right to have that choice?
How can we hope to have a strong enough president when the only way for someone to become as such is for him to be liked by the 128MPs making parliament?
Sure, on a bigger Lebanese scale people like them exist profusely. I only had to check Facebook and a Twitter for a wide cross section of people whose version of the civil war is basically the Lebanese Forces starting it, killing everyone and then losing. But on a bigger scale, I’d like to think people who are that spiteful get diluted among those who can actually see beyond the Lebanese civil war in casting a vote for a president.
This is not a country that has moved on. This is not a country that will ever move on if whenever – as they say – “bi de’ l kouz bl jarra” we end up digging up every single thing that happened in the not so long past, just because we can, in the most hypocritical of ways.
How many parliament members of the likes of those that were so gallant to cast ballots of civil war victims would cast a vote for current murderers participating in neighboring wars and holding the country hostage? No one.
I was told that having almost 50 parliament members vote for Geagea means we don’t deserve this country. After what I’ve seen today, I want to say this country doesn’t deserve us. It’s 2014 and we’re still pretending the civil war was yesterday, have member in parliaments voting for the civil war and have politicians who were all active way back then.
I want to vote for the president, not clowns in parliament who think it’s recess time.
Filed under: Lebanon
