“Lebanon Debate” – Basma Atwi
Under the patronage of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Minister of State for Administrative Development Fadi Makki launched the “National Program for Governance of Boards of Directors and Leadership in the Public Sector and the Linking Platform with Universities,” presenting the initiative as a foundational step towards enhancing institutional performance, developing senior leadership, consolidating transparency and accountability, and raising the level of governance in the Lebanese public sector.
On a theoretical level, it is difficult to object to these goals. Who can oppose governance, leadership development, strengthening the partnership between public administration and universities, or introducing modern knowledge into the public decision-making process? However, the real challenge does not lie in the slogans or in the titles, but in how to translate them into fair and comprehensive public policies. Administrative reform is not measured by the number of programs launched, but rather by the extent of their ability to address the structural problems that public administration suffers from, most notably institutional justice, stimulating human resources, and preserving the accumulated expertise within the state.
Here the main dilemma in this program arises.
The target group appears mainly to be limited to new leaders or candidates to assume leadership positions in the future, that is, groups that already receive increased political and administrative attention, and who often benefit from modern compensation and allocation systems that are radically different from the systems in place for the majority of workers in the public sector.
As for the thousands of employees, managers, heads of departments, and members of the boards of directors who actually operate public facilities and productive and service institutions, they once again found themselves outside the circle of institutional investment, even though they constitute the backbone of the Lebanese administration, and they are the ones who maintained the continuity of the state during the most difficult financial, economic, and administrative collapses that Lebanon has witnessed.
Here lies the paradox. How can we talk about “board governance” when most existing boards of directors are actually ignored? How can we talk about “leadership development” while excluding the bulk of the leadership, which daily manages the water, energy, agriculture, communications, transportation, health, infrastructure, and public services sectors? How can we talk about reforming the public sector when the majority of its workers are treated as if they are outside the reform project?
The first principle of good governance is institutional justice, the first condition for building institutions is equality in development and qualification opportunities, and the first rule of human resources management is investing in existing experienced people before looking to create new elites. In modern management literature, the human capital within the organization is considered a strategic asset no less important than finance, technology, or organizational structure, and successful organizations do not begin their reform by overcoming existing competencies, but rather by developing them, empowering them, and benefiting from their accumulated experience. What we are witnessing today is closer to the “institutional selectivity” model, where resources, training opportunities, and administrative and political attention are directed toward a specific group, while the majority are left outside the circle of institutional investment.
The most dangerous thing is that this approach comes at a moment when the Lebanese public administration is witnessing an unprecedented division in its financial and employment situations. In recent years, two clear categories have emerged within the public sector: a new category that receives salaries, allowances, or incentives linked to the US dollar or its equivalent, and benefits from support programs, financing, and additional allocations, and another broad category of employees, managers, and heads of departments who are still receiving salaries that have lost the bulk of their actual value due to the monetary collapse.
Thus, the gap within public administration is no longer linked only to functional responsibilities or administrative ranks, but rather has become a deep financial, professional and moral gap between employees who sometimes work within the same institution and perform similar tasks, but are subject to completely different systems in wages, compensation and development opportunities.
How can a manager who has spent twenty or thirty years in public service be convinced of the importance of governance and institutional development, while a new or recently contracted employee receives allowances and allowances that may exceed what he receives many times over? How can we talk about leadership development, while the actual leaders who run the state on a daily basis are still suffering from the erosion of their salaries and compensation and the decline in their purchasing power, while new programs are designed for groups that already enjoy better financial and professional conditions? Organizational justice is not only achieved by distributing training opportunities, but also by reducing unjustified differences between workers and ensuring equal opportunities in pay, appreciation, promotion and professional development.
All studies related to organizational justice confirm that the feeling of discrimination within the organization leads to a decline in motivation, productivity, and institutional belonging, and establishes a state of administrative frustration and loss of confidence in public policies. Also, allocating development programs to a specific category without clear criteria linked to performance, actual need, or job responsibility falls within what is known as indirect institutional discrimination, and it is one of the most dangerous forms of administrative dysfunction because it is practiced under attractive reform titles.
As for the platform for linking with universities, which was presented as a bridge between knowledge and public administration, it loses a large part of its value when the current executive decision-makers are deprived of benefiting from it.
Knowledge does not have an impact because it was produced in a university, but rather because it reaches departments and institutions and turns into public policies, procedures, and decisions. Therefore, linking universities to a specific category of workers does not achieve the desired goal as much as it deprives the public administration of comprehensively benefiting from this scientific effort.
Public administration is not a laboratory for producing new elites, but rather an integrated system in which experiences, competencies, and institutional knowledge accumulate over time. Any reform project that ignores those who maintained the continuity of the state in the most difficult financial, economic and administrative circumstances risks weakening the administration instead of developing it.
The question facing the Ministry of Administrative Development today is not how to train a new group of leaders, but rather how to achieve justice among all leaders. Not how to create a new administrative elite, but rather how to raise the level of the entire administrative system. Not how do you provide additional opportunities for those who already have better opportunities, but rather how do you do justice to those who carried public administration on their shoulders throughout the years of collapse.
Governance is not a privilege granted to a selected group, and reform is not a program to distribute opportunities to the privileged, but rather a general policy to build more just and efficient institutions, and institutional development does not occur by excluding those with experience in favor of those with privilege or recent appointments.
A state that invests in part of its administration and neglects the bulk of it does not build good governance, but rather reproduces disparity within the public sector under the title of reform. As for the state that believes that every employee, director, department head, and board member is part of its human capital, it is the only one capable of building a modern, sustainable, and just administration. To achieve this, it is necessary to adopt clear policies that include generalizing training and qualification programs to all job categories according to transparent standards, allowing all public departments and institutions to benefit from cooperation platforms with universities, and linking development opportunities to the efficiency, performance, and actual need of the institution, not to the job location, the recentness of the appointment, or the source of funding.
It is also necessary to address the blatant imbalances in salaries, allocations, and compensation within the public sector, because the administration that is divided into “Dollar” employees and “Lollar” employees cannot build a unified sense of belonging, justice, or public interest. The true test of governance is not the number of conferences, the number of training courses, or the slogans raised.
The real test begins when all workers in the state feel that opportunities for development, appreciation, recognition, and fairness are equally available to them. Only then does reform become real reform, governance becomes a state policy and not an elite privilege, and public administration transforms from an arena of disparity into a comprehensive national institution capable of restoring the trust of its citizens and serving the public interest efficiently, fairly, and sustainably.
