Fouad Chehab: The Belated Recognition of a Great President

As social media rediscovers the modesty and integrity of Fouad Chehab, a personal memory brings back the image of a president who sought to replace political fiefdoms with the authority of the state – and whom Lebanon fully recognized only after his death.

In recent days, photographs of President Fouad Chehab have proliferated across social media. Many users now celebrate his modesty, his honesty and his sense of the state.

One of these images shows him attending a Mass held in honor of the Virgin Mary in the early 1960s, on the esplanade of the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa, overlooking Jounieh Bay. This photograph stirs a particularly moving personal memory.

At the time, I was a teenager and a boarding student at Collège des Apôtres in Jounieh. I sang in the school choir, led by our French-language teacher, Mr. Labaki, who accompanied the religious service. President Fouad Chehab stood just a few meters away from us.

I still remember the pride I felt standing so close to the President of the Lebanese Republic. But what stays with me most is the image of a man whose very presence naturally conveyed dignity, simplicity and profound humility.

Fouad Chehab was unquestionably one of Lebanon's greatest presidents. Surrounded by capable figures, this upright, conscientious and austere man was deeply commitment to the state and to the principle of public service.

Yet during his lifetime, he was neither sufficiently understood nor properly appreciated. Like so many great men in our country, it was only after his death that many finally recognized the importance of his work.

Elected president in the aftermath of the 1958 crisis, he set out to transform a Lebanon dominated by private interests, clientelism and political fiefdoms into a genuine state built on modern institutions.

During his presidency, the public administration expanded, state authority strengthened, and the population lived in an atmosphere of security and stability whose true value we appreciate far better today. The armed forces and security services, led with firmness, commanded respect and authority.

Certain practices from that era, particularly those attributed to the Deuxième Bureau, did draw criticism and controversy. But they should not obscure the scale of the institutional work accomplished. Fouad Chehab sought to assert the authority of the state over that of clans and patronage networks. His ambition was not to wield power for its own sake, but to build an administration capable of serving all citizens.

Jounieh, home to my boarding school, was then a large, peaceful town. It was a small coastal city where long-established families lived in houses scattered along the shoreline. The opening of the Phoenicia cinema in 1963, followed by the Présidence cinema in Kaslik, were landmark events for the region. These new gathering places and cultural venues accompanied the growth that had begun a few years earlier with the Casino du Liban.

The landscape looked nothing like what we know today. The mountains surrounding Jounieh, up to the heights of Harissa, were green and still largely untouched by urbanization.

During his term, Fouad Chehab breathed new life into Jounieh and played a major role in modernizing Kesrouan. The road network expanded, infrastructure was strengthened, and the region joined the country’s broad modernization drive. His work remains, in my view, invaluable.

As his term neared its end, many members of Parliament wanted to pave the way for him to remain in office. Fouad Chehab rejected the idea and stepped down when his mandate expired.

Yet a large part of the population of Kesrouan showed him a level of ingratitude that is difficult to fathom: in the parliamentary elections, not a single candidate on the list he backed in the region was elected.

What a sad paradox. The man who had given so much to Kesrouan never received, in his lifetime, the recognition he deserved.

This ingratitude sadly reveals a constant feature of our national life: we fight true statesmen while they are still among us, then celebrate them once they can no longer hear us or serve their country.

Yesterday's opponents sometimes become their posthumous admirers. Those who had obstructed their work later claim their legacy. We turn into symbols the very men we had refused to listen to while they could still act.

In Lebanon, recognition of great men seems to arrive only after their death, once their adversaries no longer fear them and their work can be celebrated without disturbing established interests.

Fouad Chehab, however, needed neither a cult of personality nor excessive praise. His honesty, his humility, his sense of duty and the institutions he helped build speak for him. He remains the symbol of a dignified, orderly Republic, genuinely at the service of its citizens.

A nation that forgets its history, disregards its builders and refuses to learn from the past is doomed to repeat the same mistakes. It is time, then, to fulfill a genuine duty of remembrance – not to idealize an era or deny its controversies, but to do justice to those who sincerely tried to build a state and place the national interest above personal ambition.

The memory of Fouad Chehab should not simply inspire belated tributes or a handful of fleeting social media posts. It must lead us to ask ourselves what Lebanon we have lost – and, above all, what Lebanon we want to rebuild.

Truly honoring Fouad Chehab is not merely a matter of celebrating his memory after his death. It requires us to rediscover his integrity, his humility, his sense of the state and his demanding conception of public service. Only then can memory become a force for rebuilding the Republic and safeguarding the Lebanese nation.