❊ Do Words Speak Louder than Actions ?

Yesterday there was a rally by Lebanese women and men in support of a proposed law against domestic violence, which is supposed to be up for voting in parliament soon.

It was a fine rally and many people attended (though some said that the numbers — around 1,000 — show that the issue is still out of the mainstream). But what interests me is the fact that various political parties (of a surprising diversity) scrambled at the last minutes to attend the rally and emblazon banners with their logos.

Who knew the parties were so interested in this. They weren’t engaged in any mobilization campaigns to maximize attendance. They were’nt promoting the cause on their TV stations. They weren’t distributing flyers to their supporters and they weren’t hiring busses to shuttle them to the demonstration site. They were just being free riders on the back of KAFA because they wanted their logos to appear in the news coverage of the event. A sort of free-for-all publicity land-grab.

But why did they bother attend? Isn’t their biggest contribution supposed to be their vote on the actual law? The only explanation I could think of is that our political culture rewards posturing more than it rewards action. We value promises more than we value results. I guess this explains why political parties are very good at sending flags to every demonstration under the Lebanese sun, but are very bad at actually governing the country.

We have to find a way to change this..