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Lebanese Elections To Be Held On Time.

The Spirit of America blog has a great recap of the last several weeks:

Chalk up another, final, victory for the Cedar Revolution.

The Lebanese government formally announced the election will be held on time - on May 29th 2005.

The million-person demonstration, the two-month sleep-in at the tent-city, the countdown campaign, the village campaign, the media pressure, the international pressure - it all came together. It's a new era in Lebanon now. The time of post-war occupation and oppression is over. The Cedar Revolution is now over, too.

It wasn't easy living in a tent-city in downtown Beirut.

700 people were there for more than 60 days, eating outside, sleeping outside, and using outhouses set up next to a pricy Virgin Megastore. They all agreed on the basics: Lebanon should be free of Syrian occupation, free elections should be held on time, and a national Lebanese identity must be forged to counter the tribal hatefest of the past.

But, there's still much work to be done. Syria may have pulled its troops out of Lebanon, but it leaves behind intelligence officers and a lasting legacy of tyranny that must be broken.

A few powerful comments from one of the tent city denizens, "Joumy" (the one on the right).

In "After the Withdrawal," an acknowledgement that the toughest work is still ahead, and that democracy is a process, not an event:

Now that a new page is turned, we must be careful: careful to keep our unity. What we must understand is that within any democracy, not everyone has the same objectives. There will always be Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists… A healthy democracy is one that has space for all these parties, for parties are a way of expressing a group’s common outlook. Lebanon is jam-packed with such parties. What we must work on is making sure that we don’t make now the same mistakes of the past of resorting to violence to resolve our differences.

WE CANNOT AFFORD TO SLIP BACK. The only way forward is if we learn to live within a democracy and most of us seem to have forgotten what that means. Many of us have only ever seen a country which condones corruption, political coercion, “wasta”, lack of security authority, an independent judiciary, even the basic components of infrastructure. It’s time to rebuild now, and rebuilding starts from educating the people of their new rights in this new stage.
We cannot be afraid of the unknown. We cannot start to be suspicious about each other all the time, expecting the worst. It’s time to open a new page that involves dialogue- actually sitting down at a table and deciding for ourselves with no foreign intervention, what we Lebanese, think is best for our country. Let us resolve our own issues and define our own policies. It is time to live in a merit-based society, one where the individual is defined through his/ her achievements, and not through his/ her family, background, or religion…

We all want what is best for Lebanon. If we understand that national cooperation is the only way forward, history will not repeat itself. Let’s not give foreign troops a reason to come into our country…

The rapid march toward a free and independent Lebanon has been nothing short of startling and miraculous. Human nature demands freedom. It longs for freedom. And the Lebanese people, soon, will finally have their freedom.

UPDATE:

Wizbang is retiring one of its favorite pictures.

Posted by Will Franklin · 29 April 2005 11:30 AM

Comments

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at April 29, 2005 11:54 AM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at April 29, 2005 12:02 PM