When Slander Passes for Defending Depositors

We have finally discovered who made Lebanese people's bank deposits disappear: a legal challenge to a provision of a law.

As for the preceding years, the policies that brought about the collapse, and the protections that prevented accountability, they can all be relegated to the background. Today's culprit has already been identified, and the accusation is too serious to require proof: a campaign led by the presidency on behalf of the banks.

With such casual disregard, a case as vast as Lebanon's catastrophe is reduced to a narrative that claims to know people's intentions, identifies the beneficiaries, and reveals who is directing operations from Washington and who is pulling the strings from Beirut. All it lacks is evidence linking these people to the decision at issue.

But who needs evidence when depositors' anger can be used in its place?

This is where slander begins: when a political interpretation is presented as established fact, suspicion is turned into a working relationship, and the exercise of a constitutional prerogative becomes evidence of membership in the “deep state.”

Not because the presidency is above criticism. But because criticism loses its value when scrutiny of a decision is replaced by putting its author's motives on trial.

A legal provision was challenged. The Constitutional Council examined the appeal and upheld it. According to the reasoning cited, the amendment was struck down because the provision had not been adopted in accordance with the required procedures. That is a central fact, but it is swiftly pushed aside lest it interfere with the narrative: the banks made the request, the presidency complied, and the Constitutional Council finished the job.

The Constitutional Council thus becomes little more than a passageway in a story whose conclusion was written in advance. Its ruling is cited to establish that the annulment took place, but its reasoning is ignored when responsibility is being assigned.

The question everyone seems determined to avoid is clear: if the Council identified a procedural flaw warranting annulment, should that flaw be ignored simply because the law bears the label of reform?

Who decided that laws containing the word “reform” are exempt from scrutiny? And who gave a political or media faction the right to determine when compliance with proper procedures becomes a service rendered to the banks?

Every day, we Lebanese pay the price of this logic of necessity and exception. Each time, we are told that scrutiny gets in the way, that objections threaten stability, and that the compromise must be pushed through first, with its flaws corrected later. Then comes the discovery that the compromise remains in place while the corrections never arrive.

Are we to adopt the same rule once again, this time in the name of restoring people's rights?

The claim that promulgating a law and then challenging it demonstrates the “cunning” of those working for the banks also deserves examination. According to this reasoning, the problem is not the absence of a constitutional avenue, but the effective use of one. It would supposedly have been preferable to send the law back to Parliament, where the objection could have been overridden, rather than refer it to a body capable of issuing a binding decision.

In other words, resorting to constitutional review becomes grounds for suspicion precisely because it might produce genuine scrutiny!

This is a strange understanding of the state: we demand that its institutions function, provided they do not alter the outcome that political actors have already agreed to promote.

Then comes the biggest leap: from the annulment of an amendment to a single provision to the declaration of “no accountability and no return of deposits.” A headline that seals the fate of an entire country without adequately explaining how the ruling has eliminated every possibility of accountability and closed every avenue for recovering people's rights.

Was the entire law struck down? Were bank owners granted an amnesty? Was the government prohibited from developing a new solution? Or is exaggeration necessary to make the scale of the accusation match the intensity of the political feud?

It is entirely legitimate to warn of the consequences of reverting to the previous text, to debate the central bank governor's powers, and to demand safeguards against arbitrary decisions. Indeed, doing so is a duty. But claiming that a power could be used to protect a bank does not prove that it has actually been used for that purpose, nor does it prove that those who requested a review of the provision intended to provide such protection.

That is the difference between journalism and slander.

What most clearly exposes the political nature of this campaign is the portrayal of what happened as a blow to the prime minister, depriving him of an achievement he could claim. Suddenly, the focus shifts from the fate of people's money to the fate of the government's political capital. As though the success of institutions were measured by who scores the goal, and as though any review of a legislative process were an attempt to spoil the celebration of whoever claims credit for it.

But correcting a flaw does not weaken the government, nor does preventing objections make reform stronger. What weakens both is allowing loopholes to remain and then demanding everyone's silence to preserve appearances.

What is needed now is for everyone, in their respective positions, to shoulder their responsibilities: to remedy the problem, define the limits of the powers involved, prevent delays, and turn promises into enforceable decisions. Anyone who obstructs this process must be held accountable for specific actions, and anyone who protects the banks' interests must be confronted with evidence of that protection.

Blanket accusations will neither return a single deposit nor open a single investigation aimed at establishing accountability.

Depositors are people with rights, not false witnesses summoned to substantiate a political narrative. Their anger deserves better than being used as a shield in a feud with one official or another.

Those who genuinely want to defend them should explain the path to recovering their rights and identify the obstacles, supported by evidence.

As for anyone who already knows the conspirators' names before even reading the reasons behind the ruling, they chose their battle in advance and then placed the depositors in its headline.