危機状況下に頼れる政治家：フォアッド シニオーラ

A statesman who can be counted on in times of crisisNov 10, 2011 

Michael Karam

 

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/economics/a-statesman-who-can-be-counted-on-in-times-of-crisis

I like Fouad Siniora, always have. The former Lebanese finance minister and later, more famously, prime minister, has for me always been the quintessential statesman, a technocrat with a conscience, the perfect leader for a country that in reality is more driven by the dollar than by ideology.

.......

Why should I like Mr Siniora? After all, there is a segment of Lebanese society that loathes the legacy of the Hariri-Siniora axis and blames our current predicament on its profligacy. His detractors accuse him, as Hariri's finance minister, of increasing Lebanon's national debt from a perfectly manageable US$2 billion (Dh7.34bn) in 1992 to more than $30bn by 2004.

There were also the charges of corruption, of which a parliamentary committee cleared him in 2003. With hindsight, the reconstruction years of the 1990s were probably unwise. But Hariri had a vision. Basically it was: 'spend and we'll get it back in spades when we make Beirut the jewel of the Levant, and the Arabs will flock to its gleaming new city centre'. It was a bold, some might even say reckless, roll of the dice, a strategy that wasn't helped by the ever-present culture of embezzlement - over which one would like to assume Mr Siniora had no control - that raised the debt. But at least there was a vision and a plan.

I like Mr Siniora simply because, as prime minister between 2005 and 2009, he represented the Lebanon many of us wanted after the Cedar Revolution. Here was a technocrat, strongly pro-business (as any good Lebanese Sunni should be) who also had a sense of duty.

......

So why, many of you wonder, am I suddenly writing a paean to someone many see as yesterday's man? Well, last Friday he hit out at the US government for cutting off tens of millions of dollars in contributions to Unesco, which relies on the Americans for much of its funding, after the body granted membership to the Palestinian Territories.

Instead of urging the Arab street to rise up and take Jerusalem or burn the US and Israeli flags, Mr Siniora's reaction was to call on Arab and Islamic countries to get out their chequebooks and pay the shortfall. It would, he said "thwart Israeli blackmail and intimidation and US pressure [for the sake of] dominance". It was a suggestion on-message with the so-called Arab Awakening.

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NOTE:

 

＊ Fouad Siniora前レバノン首相、Rafik Hariri内閣の元財務大臣

 

＊ レバノンの債務：1992年時に20億ドル から2004年時には300億ドル

 

＊ 1975年以来16年に及んだレバノン市民戦争後の復興再建、開発への大胆な建設計画で膨らました債務の責任者でもあるが、故ハリーリ首相と共に、過去のベイルート、地中海の宝石の栄光再建により、湾岸アラブ諸国からの観光収入で十分に返済できると云うビジョンを持っての野心的な再興計画を実行した。

 

＊ イデオロギーよりもドル収入に動機で動く国柄、国民性を理解している、危機状況下で最も頼りにできるテクノクラート 政治家

 

＊ パレスチナのユネスコ正式加入採決に反対した、米国のユネスコ賛助金引揚に際し、シニオーラが全アラブ諸国に呼びかけたのは、反イスラエル政治行動ではなく、アラブ諸国が賛助金を肩代わりしよう、と言うものだった。