It is difficult to evoke the commemoration of 14 February, with all of the changes this event that induced in Lebanon, without remembering the slogans that came as a response to the crime committed on that sad day. Those who will go to the heart of Beirut on Sunday - to the public square whose name has also become itself a slogan (Freedom Square) - to revive the slogans “freedom, sovereignty and independence”, and to reject all arms that do not belong to the state, must also be recalling all the developments that took place in the last five years, as they certainly feel the distance between that day's slogans and those of this year. Where do we stand today? Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik Hariri, is now the prime minister of Lebanon, and has visited Damascus and met with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The four generals, whose photos were held on the signs raised on 14 February 2005, and who were accused of being complicit in the crime, are now out of prison, and outside the scope of accusations, following their ‘release'. This while the Future Movement and its allies are now sitting side by side with the enemies of yesterday in the national unity government, after they failed to incorporate their electoral campaign statements into the government's policy statement, in a manner that would have otherwise reflected the popular majority that had voted them in. In truth, the crowds that descended on public squares one month after Rafik Hariri's assassination spawned what they wanted to call the ‘Cedar revolution'. These crowds carried their banners and chanted their slogans, and put in motion a national political movement spearheaded by leaders from most Lebanese sects. It was thus hoped that the March 14 Coalition would engender the second independence and that the country would arise again, in the wake of its liberation from foreign tutelage, similarly to what happened during the first independence. In a country where the definition of the meaning of independence is not yet unified at the national level, it was only natural for the dispute over this meaning to also extend to the other slogan, namely sovereignty that had been attractive in 2005 with the end of occupations and foreign tutelage. Thus, the developments of the last five years have not only aborted the idea of independence; they have also raised difficult questions about the concept of national sovereignty itself, given that the affiliations of politicians and political parties with foreign parties involve a high degree of commitment, in most cases arriving at a type of tutelage. It was also natural for the concept of sovereignty to suffer a sharp blow, owing to this loyalty to foreign parties on the part of most politicians in Lebanon. However, repairing national cohesion following the rift caused by the Hariri assassination required concessions, at the expense of sovereignty. Hence, the slogans of sovereignty and independence appear feeble today when compared to the past, when the ‘beautiful, rosy dream' was still alive. For this reason, the descent of Prime Minister Saad Hariri from the high ground of the 14 March slogans to today's de facto realities during his television interview on the eve of the commemoration, appeared to be an attempt to awaken the masses - which seem to be still attached to yesterday's slogans - from their dream state to the realistic state that governing the country stipulates. This governance can only be sound if today's realities are dealt with, as imposed by “facts of history and geography,” as Hariri put it, and they are realities that were apparently ignored by everyone who gathered at Freedom Square on the earlier occasions of Hariri's martyrdom's anniversary. This is not all. In his interview, Hariri appeared to be calling for a divorce with politics and for more focus on people's affairs, who cannot feed themselves with a “[Sic] politics sandwich,” as he put it. This divorce between politics and the economy is what exhausted Rafik Hariri when he was, once, asked to devote himself to economic issues and “leave politics to the politicians.” In truth, there are those who say that it was the elder Hariri's failure to make this break that cost him dearly. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the ruins of the March 14 slogans, it is that achieving sovereignty in any country requires a vigorous pro-sovereignty camp, and not just one or two individuals. It requires a near-total belief in the priority of strengthening the country against the whims and interests of foreign parties, which are present in the vicinity of any country. Without such immunization, sovereignty remains a slogan, like independence, and this latter slogan is what the Lebanese have been continuing to search for since ‘their independence.' Otherwise, the occasion of 14 February remains a painful memory, but one that does not generate a national awakening, as was hoped. This is because it was forced, at the first juncture, to submit to the reality of the foreign entanglement of a major political constituent in the country.
