In a very interesting comment, MP Michel Aoun compares the government to a  business model: a company that is exploiting its employees, playing monopoly, and all it cares about is the short term profits for the individuals that are governing.

I can’t agree more with the “General”.

However, if we can be more careful with comparaison, a state can be simulated as a company:  

-         First the state has to be a "public" company and traded on the stock market. If a government acts like a private company, this government is nothing but a dictatorship and corrupt (hence the simulaion of the General)

-         The board of trustees is nothing but the parliament.

-         The executive board is the government, who often reports to the board of trustees about strategic plans and future tactics.

-         The government employees are similar to the employees of teh comapny.

-         The shareholders are the citizens.

With these similarities, accountability, an inexistent word in the Lebanese politics dictionary, is guaranteed. If the executive board fails to insure profitability, the board of trustees should kick them out. If the latter fails to do so, the shareholders won’t elect them in their annual meeting (election day). For the executive board to succeed, all of its employees should perform. Failure to do so will put the CEO (prime minister) at risk of keeping his (or her) job.

If everything works fine, the shareholder will see an appreciation in their shares’ value and the whole country will advance.

One might argue that metrics are clear in a company whether the CEO is doing a fine job or not. In politics things are often grey. In my opinion, this theory is flat wrong. In politics, metrics of government performance are crystal clear.

What shareholders or citizens in this case need to check is the following:

-    Security: is the country safe, what is the level of crimes?

-     GDP growth

-         Unemployment rate, or the number of new jobs created every month

-         The social benefits

-         The level of poverty

-         The deficit

-         The purchasing power, or what percent of the wage can be put aside at eh end of the month

Doing the numbers of all the above, the shareholders can decide whether to keep the board of trustees (the parliament) in business or not.

I can’t deny that this is an ideal situation that works in a country that has minimum of religious influence, but our only hope to succeed in building a decent country is to think as a shareholders whose main concern is to see their shares appreciating.