What can any presidential candidate say or do for Bassam Sheikh Hussein and his family, before and after the incident he carried out yesterday at the bank where he was unable to withdraw the money necessary to treat his father and address his son's previous medical issues? How should any new president of the republic address this case, in which the humanitarian aspect outweighs the security side, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it? Even the suffering experienced by some bank customers and innocent employees due to the incident is predominantly social, not security-related.
Regardless of the ongoing discussions surrounding the presidential entitlement and its background, the political forces responsible for selecting the upcoming president face a test of considering such incidents and others that may occur after the new president is elected. It is certain that he will not be able to evade responsibility as President Michel Aoun did, since he introduced the presidency into the contest for achieving benefits under the banner of sectarian rights.
The political identity of the next president is under discussion, approached by different factions through the lens of external loyalty and factional allegiance to one of the two broad camps that make up most of the political life in the country. However, there is no value in setting political specifications except from the standpoint of the political forces' readiness to allow the country some respite from being tied to this or that axis. The subjugation that was a priority for some factions was the primary factor leading to ruin.
In the name of prioritizing the presidency against Western nations under misleading titles, and in the name of coexisting with the irrefutable reality out of fear of security unrest, every policy that led to the accumulation of the reasons for the country's bankruptcy was justified, despite international financial references warning of this bankruptcy years before it occurred, with collusion from most of the political class in exchange for enormous gains for some and a situation that felt more like crumbs for others.
Those involved in voting for the new president must rid themselves of the responsibility of providing answers to Bassam Sheikh Hussein when others repeat what he did, despite the fact that they are fully responsible for the crisis which ranks as the top among the three most severe crises, according to last month's World Bank report on the Lebanese crisis. The main traditional political forces involved in voting for the new president, apart from the change-makers and some independents, will not be able to provide the necessary answers to the citizen who was forced by oppression to storm the bank in Hamra yesterday, for sure. They will not convince the women who protested in the south and earlier in Bekaa, who dared to confront the power of Hezbollah, alongside other leaders in different regions.
These forces may need to save themselves the search for the characteristics of the next president, as they are already outlined in the World Bank report that discusses the hypocrisy of the current ruling group in repeatedly emphasizing the sanctity of depositors' money while accusing them of "deliberately" impoverishing the Lebanese by delaying solutions with tiresome political slogans that are detached from reality.
The experience of the past three years has proven that one of the most prominent features of the political economy in the country has exacerbated the accumulation of debts, adding a new reason for their growth while the crisis chart continues to rise. The main driver of this rise was the insistence of the ruling and influential political forces to "achieve political and financial benefits from the excess costs imposed on citizens and the privileges granted to the few." This has led to the further "absence of essential public services."
The characteristics of the new president that are frequently discussed require acceptance of a president who distances himself from all those arrangements that justified previous policies under the guise of maintaining stability. If some political forces responsible for his selection fail to grasp the implications of what the international report stated, they will elect a repeated model of the lean years prior, making it impossible to restore trust and difficult to provide transparency over malice and absurdity in managing the country. These are the two elements needed for recovery to commence, enabling Bassam Sheikh Hussein and others to receive the answers they seek.
