Lebanese internal crisis: How can Youth become the solution?

Unlike most countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Lebanon has had democracy since its independence in 1945. We were never under any dictator that deprived us from our political or social rights. In Lebanon we choose who is our president and we vote freely for our parliament and we never had a single party state.

The Question is, why is Lebanon still politically unstable even when the public gets to choose its fate?

Well, in this small country it is more complicated than a simple democratic process, it consists of 18 different ethnics who all call for their right have a say in the decision making process.

Religion and ethnicity has never been a problem for an ordinary Lebanese who has lived and interacted with all his fellows from all different religions in those 10,000 km2. However, the problem is that our politicians are too smart and took advantage of divisions started during the civil war in 1975. Those leaders, after being responsible for thousand of lives and millions of losses for people, met in Taef city of Saudi Arabia and reformed a new political system known as the Taef agreement. This agreement (although not fully applied) gave the country its secratarian face and gave those leaders the exclusive right to win parliament seats and denied a free willed candidate from his chance to get into the parliament and participate in the policy making process.

After 1990 there has been no major change in the political scene in Lebanon, we ended up being the hostages of political parties that do not have democracy themseleves and therefore we vote for a whole party based on what the leader says with no regard to its agenda or the members that are running in it.

And now, we hear calls from SayyedHassan Nasrullah for a new national conference to make a new system in Lebanon. But Mr. Nasrallah, with all due respect, we shall not repeat the same mistake again! You and Mr. Foad Seniora have been responsible for May 5^th incidents and the black Tuesday, we will not grant you again the right to decide our country's fate!
But where does the Lebanese youth stand between all that?

Our youth nowadays is very busy away from politics, some of them are trying to find a proper job, others are getting paid to hold weapons and terrorize the public, some are leaving and the rest is staying desperate unwilling to make a change. Every single Lebanese is afraid not to vote for his traditional leader that "promises" to protect his ethnicity from others so that the other one doesn't take over and rule.

However, the good news my fellow Lebanese is that there is a way out! We, the youth, have the power to make the change but all what we need is a strong will! We need to dare and say no and start with our own to get things done.

Establishing a Think Tank is the first step towards manufacturing free youth able to make decisions and write policies in addition to reviewing the current policies and evaluating their advantages and weaknesses. The Think Tank is a starting procedure where youth will get trained and reach way above the level of our parliament members in policy making (we have seen how long they sleep in the parliament). The think tank will tackle issues from different topics including but not limited to:

- Foreign Policy- Defense and Security- Education- Economy and Finance- Energy and Environment

(all respect Mr. Bakradonian)

The next step would be with a national youth shadow government, this government will follow day to day the work of each ministry and write monthly reports about the work done and the work that has to be done by this mnistry. If you say that there is one already existing, my answer is yes, we need to form another, more modern, more effective and more popular one!
Policy makers in the think tank, along with the shadow government will be strong enough to prepare the next generation of young leaders who will dare sooner or later to join the real politics and change the balance of this country from up to down, the level of ordinary people.

This process takes time indeed, and more complicated than it seems, but it has to start now, and better today than tomorrow. Youth have to go out of the box and think of our country and not our ethnicity and for sure we all can.

The Lebanese Institute for Youth PolicyMaking has taken the first step towards that, and we believe goals can be achieved sooner than expected. Join us and lets start making the change together regardless where we live, to which politician we vote, or what our religion is. A Lebanese passport or ID alone is enough to make us believe in starting the change and disappoint our "traditional" secratarian leadership who have planned our lives for the next 10 years if not 20.