Economic woes stoke political standoff

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Anti-government protesters have blocked roads with burning tires across Beirut for two days after Hizbullah threw its weight behind a general strike called by the country's union federation to demand higher wages and decry high prices.

A pall of smoke hovers above parts of a city of shuttered shops and empty roads, as people stay home for fear of the sectarian violence that flares up periodically in Beirut and stokes fears of civil war.

The strike was called by labor unions after rejecting a last-minute government increase in the monthly minimum wage, previously unchanged since 1996, from $200 to $330.

A grocer in the Ras al-Nabeh neighborhood of Beirut said a bottle of cooking oil had risen from $4 to $6.50, while the price of sugar had doubled.

Where $1 dollar used to buy 1.5 kilograms of bread, it now buys just 1.1 kilos. Chickpeas and grains, key staples of Lebanese diets, meat and vegetables have also risen.

According to the consumer association, prices have risen by 43 percent over the past 21 months, while the official unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. Independent estimates put it at 20 percent.

Mahmoud, an unemployed 20-year-old at the barricade who preferred not to give his full name, said rising prices and low wages made it harder for young men to get ahead.

"At this rate, I'll never get married," he said. "You have to work several jobs at once just to make ends meet, and it's hard even to find one.

"Women don't want to marry a man who can't afford even to rent his own home," he said.

Both young men, who said they were Hizbullah supporters from the mainly Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut, blamed the government for the worsening living conditions in the capital and other parts of the country.

"Every time we protest about price rises and low wages, or the policies of this government that's on Western life-support, we're told we're stirring Sunni-Shiite strife," said Mahmoud.

Because the strike was associated with the opposition, some government supporters were showing their defiance.

In a pro-government part of the eastern area of Achrafieh, Raymond Charbel, a 68-year-old father of three, defied the strike to keep his run-down dry-cleaning shop open despite the dearth of customers.

Food to feed his family had become harder to afford, he acknowledged, noting that lemons - frequently used in Lebanese cooking - had more than doubled from about $0.75 a kilogram to $1.75.

But "Inflation and economic ruin are affecting everybody, so what good is closing down the roads so no one can work?" Charbel asked.

Rami Zurayk, professor of land and water resources at the American University of Beirut, said the crisis resulted from a combination of global commodity and oil price rises and economic mismanagement by successive governments since Lebanon's 15-year Civil War ended in 1990.

Those policies had focused on sectors of the economy that directly contributed to national growth, rather than on job-creation, development and investment in such sectors as farming, he said.

"So inequality between the people of Lebanon has continued to increase over time," Zurayk said.

Gradual economic disintegration was a catalyst for the political problems and the sectarianism that plague Lebanon, he argued.

"Bad economics produces a situation in which politicians become powerful, because you have to hide behind a sect, a leader, and become a client in order to survive," the professor explained. "In turn, the bad economic situation is hijacked by political parties in order to apply pressure."

A standoff on the flashpoint Corniche al-Mazraa road between government and opposition supporters, with the army separating the two, illustrated how far Lebanon's politicians are from reaching a deal to end the 18-month political crisis.

Tensions between Hizbullah and the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora escalated this week after the latter banned the group's private telephone system, calling it a threat to the state.

Hizbullah said that the network was part of its military defense against Israel and that tampering with it was collaboration and tantamount to disarming the group.

Hizbullah's weapons are one of the issues at the heart of the political deadlock.

The government also this week vowed to sack the security chief at Beirut international airport over allegations of aiding Hizbullah to place cameras there to monitor private jets. Airport employees stopped working for six hours while opposition protesters blocked roads to the airport, leading to the cancellation or delay of dozens of flights both into and out of Beirut. - IRIN

© Copyright The Daily Star 2008.