❊ On The Resignation Of Ziad Baroud

I’ve been thinking about Minster Ziad Baroud’s resignation and asking myself: Is Mr. Baroud naive or brilliant?

He could be what he appears to be: A naive idealist who resigned in frustration because he underestimated the importance of power-politics. A better political operator like Elias el Murr would never have sent an order in public to the head of military intelligence to stop doing what Sayyed Nasrallah had ordered him to do. He would have tried to find a solution that doesn’t involve a loss of face to anyone and work something out behind the scenes.

You might protest the logic above as precisely the point of Mr. Baroud’s resignation. He doesn’t want to be a part of this dirty game of “political territory”. The problem is that this “dirty game” is politics. This is how things get achieved in any country, but it is even more vicious in Lebanon. Sympathy won’t get you anywhere, only sharp elbows and tactical bending will. I have no patience for the theatrics of falling on your sword because you’re “too clean for this game.”

But Mr. Baroud could also be brilliant. He could have snatched this opportunity to gracefully bow out of the game (for now) because he was becoming a divisive figure. The sympathy he gathers today could be invested for a white-horse comeback sometime in the future. Who knows? If he plays his cards right, he can even become a president (a position which is allergic to divisive figures)