Al Anwar – March 18

Fouad Daaboul

The (great men) left, the (little ones) remained!!

Issam Fares knows the rules!

He knows how to honor great men.

And he is one of them.

He is also a great man in his wealth and his contributions.

People hoped that he comes back to his home country.

When he came back, duty called him.

He answered the call with the bravery of the brave.

He became the Vice-Prime Minister.

However, he knows himself very well.

He also knows who are capable of serving Lebanon across the world.

The country is bending under the weight of crises.

People are living in a crisis.

Poverty is strangulating them; unemployment is smothering them.

The youth are lost and remain far from universities and institutes.

He understood all these things very quickly.

He fought poverty and was generous.

He granted scholarships for youth with total discretion.

The Lebanese discovered very soon that this man was a human miracle.

Issam Fares was a man of state. He was also a state in a man.

He did not contend himself with doing good and helping people.

But he was too openhanded and endeavored to rebuild a war-stricken state.

He deployed arduous efforts and offered great contributions.

He was happy to give.

This is the greatest feeling a man can have, as Said Akl says.

***

This authority goes across the world.

When one of the richest men on planet visits its country, the local people rush to harm him and to hurt whoever came with him to Lebanon.

An authority (protecting) under its wings losers. What will it then do?

It did not know how to attract great men to support it.

It did not attempt to attract one of Issam Fares’ sons to work with it.

Instead, it attracted those filling show-off positions.

On the day when Carlos Slim left Lebanon, he was the last one to come to mind, to ask for what others asked for, four years later.

The applicant is not rightful in his request.

It is not a lesson.

But it is in the right of the people to ask about the reasons behind that.

And it is the duty of the authority in place to give the answer.

It knows who went far, but ignores the reasons behind that.

If Najad Fares has been in the appropriate position, no one would have left a state, in need of statesmen.

Will the country stay, with an authority in place aiming at filling empty positions with the (best) sharing of positions, not with the best men?

A state does not stand up but with statesmen.

Will the others understand the secret?