"A Rebuke" to Politicians... and a Warning Bell!

International decision-making circles continue to urge Lebanese officials to pay attention to the country's affairs and address the plight of the citizens, who have suddenly become impoverished due to the mismanagement of power and the sharing of the state's wealth and spoils. Among these campaigns, the World Bank recently accused politicians of cruelty for insisting that deposits in the country's collapsed banking sector are sacred, emphasizing that such slogans starkly contradict reality. The report indicates that Lebanon has been experiencing an intentional financial collapse for the third year in a row, leaving eight out of ten people in poverty, and could be one of the worst three financial collapses in modern times. This new report is the second this year in which the World Bank rebukes politicians and influential figures, after accusing them in January of orchestrating the country's catastrophic economic collapse through their exploitative grip on resources. The report concluded by considering political slogans regarding the sanctity of deposits as hollow and opportunistic, pointing out that the use of such terms by politicians is harsh. MP Razi Al-Haj, a member of the Strong Lebanon bloc, told "Al-Markaziya": "The World Bank report did not bring anything new but rather described the situation in Lebanon, where losses in the economy are realized due to the absence of sound financial policies and clear economic visions from successive governments over the past thirty years, which nurtured this system." He added: "The report comes within the framework of concern for Lebanon and serves as a warning bell against continuing to follow the same approach of passing responsibility around, such as insisting on restructuring and other matters that often come at the expense of the public budget, which favors expenditure over income and leads to a perpetual deficit without resorting to necessary reforms and measures. Even laws passed by the parliament lose their substance and are bypassed, remaining without implementation, like banking secrecy and public procurement laws and other important laws that have been approved." He concluded: "There is a need to separate politics from the economy and to have a clear recovery plan to compensate for losses with future profits, while all the current statements from officials concerning the economy are politically unfeasible."