Country in name 0nly...

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 10

Country in name 0nly...

By SAMIA NAKHOUL NZPA-Reuter aßeirut Lebanon is observing 45 years of independence today with no President, two rival Governments, a divided army and a crippled Parliament. “Apologies to you, Lebanon. We celebrate your birth once every year but we murder you thousands of times every day,” said the acting Muslim Prime Minister, Selim Hoss, the head of a Syrian-backed Cabinet. “Forty-five years ago we achieved independence but 45 years later we found out that we did not deserve it,” he said. The anniversary of independence from France finds Lebanon split into a

patchwork of competing fiefdoms and deep in a new constitutional crisis. A 13-year-old civil war has killed at least 130,000 people and maimed or made homeless thousands. Rocketing inflation and the collapse of the Lebanese pound, which has lost 98 per cent of its international value over the last four years, have compounded the misery. Since the French mandate ended, Lebanon has been governed 'on the basis of an unwritten charter designed as a stopgap to avert schisms between the Muslim and Christian communities. Under the terms of that accord, the President has always been a Maronite

Christian, the Prime Minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of Parliament, a Shi’ite. The failure to elect a successor to • President Amin Gemayel on September 22 and the establishment of rival Cabinets has effectively destroyed the pact and brought the country to the brink of formal partition. Mr Hoss’s Cabinet and an interim military administration headed by the Christian army commander, General Michel Aoun, are now vying for control.

Analysts say a rapidly expanding Muslim population and lopsided economic growth concentrated in private hands has

sparked Muslim calls for a greater share of power.

Even before competing Governments emerged, Syrian troops occupied almost two-thirds of the country and the Israelis a southern border strip. Sandbags, militia checkpoints and barricades slicing Beirut into Christian and Muslim halves have grown over the years. “Independence means freedom, self-determina-tion and authority. We have nothing left of all that,” said Maguy Farah, a veteran journalist.

“Our independence has been withering bit by bit every year. This year we realise that nothing has been left.”