Let me begin with a disclaimer. I do not subscribe to the full gospel of the Sovereignists (our local Republicans), nor do I buy much of the manifesto of the Reformists (our Lebanese Democrats, more or less). This is not a tribal declaration of allegiance – it’s a dispatch from someone weary of false binaries and ideological fanfare.
I’m no financial expert, and I don’t pretend to be. But I do have some memory, lots of common sense, and a healthy skepticism of the systems that got us here, and keep us here.
For decades, many of Lebanon’s defenders of sovereignty have confused freedom with opacity. Bank secrecy became a proxy for patriotism. Tax evasion was dressed up as self-preservation. The vault turned into a national shrine, and those who benefited most from it became untouchable. What began as shrewd maneuvering slowly hardened into dependency on deposits we didn’t earn, privileges we didn’t question, and illusions we couldn’t afford.
It wasn’t capitalism. It was rent-seeking dressed up as “resistance.” A cross between Saigon and Singapore, a self-serving model sustained by foreign indulgence, diplomatic cover, and domestic silence. And when the music stopped, there was no money, no alternatives, and – tellingly – no accountability.
That said, financial privacy has its place. In any serious capitalist system, it’s a cornerstone. A protection for innovators and investors alike. But there’s a line between privacy and impunity. Secrecy must serve creation, not conceal decay. It should empower the productive, not shield the parasitic. And it should be earned through value, not inherited through power.
Then came the Reformists, with their presentations, buzzwords, and holier-than-thou intentions. They diagnosed the rot and responded with spreadsheets. Yet when pressed, they overlooked or downplayed the real cancer. Why? Because the very state they want to empower is the same one that, until yesterday, was commandeered by imported militant fanatics and local merchants of conscience. Anything but a state in the true sense.
Transparency, equity, oversight. All noble in theory. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find yet another form of control: one that sees citizens as data points, and success as a problem to be forcibly redistributed. Only to turn a laissez-faire eye on the same leeching crooks that creep into the vault and cling to the cash economy they crave.
Clarity is not the same as justice. A bureaucracy. No matter how “French” or donor-funded, is still a bureaucracy if it suffocates initiative and espouses dominion. In trying to correct the sins of secrecy, we risk falling into the rigidity of overregulation, a model that equalizes by flattening rather than elevating.
What Lebanon needs is not another imported model. It needs a return to first principles: work, risk, reward, responsibility. It needs clear rules and reliable systems. But it also needs to step aside for those ready to build, invest, and innovate. A real sovereign economy isn’t one where money hides in safes, nor one where the state monitors every transaction. It’s one where opportunity isn’t reserved for the connected, and success isn’t punished for being visible.
Lebanon’s edge was never its vaults. It was, and still is, its people. The country’s most valuable export has always been its minds. Engineers, artists, doctors, developers, and creatives – survivors and contributors. Not just talented, but accountable. And yet, we’ve built a system that either exiles or exhausts them, rather than empowers them.
So no, this is not a call for more secrecy or more oversight. It is a call for serious sovereignty, military and financial alike. It’s about merit. It’s about building a country that respects enterprise, rewards effort, and enforces fairness, not through slogans, but through systems.
If we must preserve anything, let it not be old-fashioned opacity. Let it be modern accountability. And if we must take a side, then yes, give me sovereignty. But give me the kind that liberates the individual, not just the account.
You don’t revive Lebanon by breaking the vault, or worshiping it. You build what’s next. Free of hidden bigotries, and most of all, free from ideological vanity. The future has Lebanon written all over it.
