Lebanon, You can conquer "Israel", but you cannot respect your own youth!

Too young to vote, but old enough to get sent to jail

Local Editor, 23-02-2010

Lebanon's Parliament addressed Lebanon's youth and said, "you are not mature enough to vote and elect the country's representatives."

In Lebanon, 18 years of age is the benchmark. After that age, the youth can drive their cars, own a business, get prosecuted as an adult, and even get sent to jail.

But the echelons of politics finds the most active portion of the masses that crowd and cheer and rally for them all over the country ‘not fit' to vote.

Strange it is in this country where children are born with a spoon of politics in their mouths.

Great hypocrisy on the side of Lebanon's ‘acting' MPs and political leaders allowed the act to slip by.

Only 34 out of Lebanon's 128 members of parliament voted in favor of the bill, whereas 66 abstained and one voted against.

The 34 lawmakers who voted in favor of the bill included members of Hizbullah's Loyalty to the resistance Bloc, the Progressive Socialist Party, Speaker Nabih Berri's Development and Liberation bloc, as well as MPs from the Syrian Social National Party and the Baath Party, in addition to MPs Mohammed Safadi, Tamam Salam, Nicolas Fattoush, Omar Karami, Imad Hout and Qassem Abdulaziz.

The 66 lawmakers who abstained from voting represent major parliamentary blocs such as PM Saad Hariri's Future Movement, the Democratic Gathering, MP Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the Phalange Party.
MP Serge Torsarkissian alone voted against the bill.

Nothing new here.

Only a year earlier Lebanese lawmakers voted in favor of the bill the youth believed would grant them their "basic right" to vote.

Put to the first test, the ‘leaders' either failed, or lied to their masses in the first place.

The ‘leaders' are now rallying for emigrating Lebanese to vote: people who in most cases haven't set foot on Lebanese soil for generations.

But bring down the voting age to 18.....Nope.

Dream on Lebanon, dream. You can conquer "Israel", but you cannot respect your own youth! Your Politicians have failed you.