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Some countries require caretaking. They need someone else to manage not only an exceptional situation, but also their day-to-day life. This pattern recalls the period of mandates, all born after the First or Second World War – initiatives meant to build a state that wasn’t there, or to organize a country that was barely so.
Our French mandate did so, before concluding in 1943. Since then, politically, we’ve had quite a few tribulations until the advent of the mandating power that was Syria, which we thought was the worst of all – until it was replaced by Iran under the mullahs.
But that’s not all. Seeing that this country is still too weak to stand on its own, concurrent attempts at alternative mandates have never ceased, from the French side, Americans or the United Nations; including at the current hour, the hour of all dangers. Attempts symbolized by Jean-Yves Le Drian, Amos Hochstein, or even the Quintet Committe, which has been active for months. All situations perfectly explained by our political analysts on the site.
At the socio-economic level, mandates are perhaps less publicized but just as omnipresent. So what’s the panorama on this front? Nothing radically different from the political sphere: first the financial mandate given to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Then, on an individual level, ministries and other state entities seem to be subject to their own mandates, plural; so that the initiatives of each entity are decided, organized, executed, and controlled by mandating parties. Not a single initiative or project is carried out without an external sponsor, creating this unfortunate impression of dependence.
Take, for example, the Ministry of Health. Just in the last two years, not to go too far back, the ministry has concluded what it euphemistically calls cooperation agreements, which are in fact takeovers, with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the European Union (EU), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UNICEF, Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI), South Korea, Canada, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Organon (a global healthcare company), Italy, the World Bank, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Japan… and dozens of associations or private entities.
Equivalent listings could be drawn up for all the other ministries, if we had enough space or megabytes. Interventions, sometimes presented as mere “crisis-time assistance,” go far beyond that. Representatives of the cooperating party even settle in at the ministry to prepare files, plan, and execute. The height of absurdity is that some of these employees stationed at the ministry, and paid by an international organization, are tasked with preparing the necessary files to request aid from another international organization… and so on.
This situation, which has lasted for more than four years now, has even created an almost pathological addiction. We enjoy being taken care of. This is perhaps far from the essence of a real state. But no one cares, as long as the next assistance dossier passes the test. As for the ministers in all of this, they are kept in the freezer, just to preserve them for their role as a figurehead at the next press conference.
This is why some essential issues have remained unresolved for years, such as a comprehensive financial plan, or negotiations with creditors, or certain laws or reform measures: simply because the mandators have not been able to handle them yet.
It’s also why all these ordinary people find it difficult to foresee a future beyond the next two days, let alone shape it. We have the unbearable impression that the future of the country depends on our statesmen, as much as the weather next week depends on the weatherman on TV.
This is entirely understandable when all you see are sleepy leaders, and mandators busy with everyday affairs, taking their hand to cross the street, helping them with the daily homework, or burping them before bedtime.
