"March 14th’s Blahbitty-Blah-Blah Electoral Program"

Qifa Nabki, with a twist, here

"For those of you who have not yet had the chance to read March 14th’s epoch-making Fourteen Points (which make Woodrow Wilson’s look like a grocery list) then be sure to check them out. They are inspiring as hell. I’ve summarized them below.

1. Avoid getting destroyed by Israel.

2. Strip Hizbullah of its weapons.

3. Continue to fight Syria while pretending we are kissing and making up.

4. Don’t piss off the international community by losing the election and allowing Hizbullah to come to power.

5. Reassure the Arab world that we don’t really think we’re not Arab, even if we sometimes joke about it.

6. Remind our “Palestinian brethren” that not even in their wildest dreams will they ever, ever, ever be settled in Lebanon.

7. Build the state and its institutions, perfect our democracy, give equal rights to all, dismantle confessionalism, lower the voting age to 18, create a non-sectarian electoral law, enforce the Ta’if Accord, create a senate, reform state institutions, eliminate corruption, establish administrative decentralization, and fill the world with peace and justice.

8. Make sure Syria is implicated by the International Tribunal.

9. Don’t get steamrolled by the global financial crisis.

10. Create jobs.

11. Save health care, education, and social services, establish basic rights for the citizen, create a social contract, and eliminate poverty.

12. Empower women (by proposing legislation that we will then not vote in favor of, kind of like the Boutros Electoral Law).

13. Cater to the whims of the Lebanese diaspora, because without the annual $7 billion Lebanon gets in remittances, we’d all be toast.

14. Save the environment.

See what I mean? It’s elegant, succinct, to the point. Plus, it concentrates all the really complicated and hard stuff into a couple of clauses, making it easier to jettison later. (”Well, we may not have gotten around to fulfilling #7 or #11, but hey, shoot for the stars, right?”)

How much do you want to bet that the March 8th list (as yet to be unveiled) looks exactly like this, minus a clause here or there?"