Calls to action: Lebanon’s continued protests

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Today. At a grandiose monument near Madrid, the coffin of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is being exhumed to be reburied in a quiet public cemetery. The controversy surrounding the move says a lot about how Spain remembers its bloody history. And Thailand has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Southeast Asia. Officials have been trying to address the problem with free contraception and education efforts. Now they're turning to teenaged radio DJs for help. But first, The streets of downtown Beirut, between the huge mosques, old churches and buildings ruined by the civil war, have been filled with demonstrations for more than a week.

We are here because we don't believe anymore in our government.

I never thought the day would come that I would witness such a beautiful thing. The entire Lebanese people from across the country just going down the streets and raising their voice together, united with music and dancing.

People from all classes and from all of Lebanon's rich mixture of sectarian identities have come out to protest against a government that presides over a barely functioning state. And it's not just in Beirut. Demonstrations can be found all over the tiny country of fewer than 5 million people. Few things work in Lebanon. Electricity provision is minimal. Water isn't drinkable and the roads are a mess.

We have no dignity. What we are asking for is our basic needs. Security, electricity, water. We're not asking for extravagant lifestyle. We're just asking for what we should have by the year 2019.

This state of affairs isn't new, but the demonstrations are. Whether because people were resigned to the difficulties of life or because they feared the repercussions other Arab demonstrators have suffered. They rarely called for change, but resentment has grown over many years. And one recent outrage proved to be too much.

The final straw that sparked these protests was a proposed tax on calls made via WhatsApp. It would have been small, a 20 cent a day fee that the Lebanese government wanted to impose. But it really struck a nerve.

Greg Karlstrom is our Middle east correspondent based in Cairo.

WhatsApp, of course, we all use it, but particularly in Lebanon, it's important. The telecom sector there, which is state owned, is notorious for its high prices. A local call can cost you 20 cents a minute in Lebanon, which is exponentially more than in most other countries in the Middle East. And so many Lebanese rely on WhatsApp not only to keep in touch at home, but also with a far flung diaspora that's scattered around the world. And so when the government proposed a tax on this, it really struck a nerve with people.

But presumably a week on. The demonstrations are not still just about WhatsApp, of course.

I mean, the tax was withdrawn very quickly after the protests began, but they continue. This is not really about WhatsApp. It's about decades of grievances. You go down the list of basic infrastructure that a state is meant to provide. Lebanon doesn't provide it. It spends about $2 billion a year subsidizing an electric company that can't provide 24 hour electricity. Telecoms, apart from being expensive also, Lebanon has some of the slowest Internet connections in the world. You had a garbage crisis a few years ago where trash was piling up in the streets of Beirut. That garbage is now being dumped in the ocean. And so the beautiful Mediterranean coastline is being ruined. Apart from the sea being polluted, the land is being polluted with runaway development. And then just earlier this month, you had wildfires that swept across the Shouf Mountains outside of Beirut. And the government struggled to put them out, in part because their firefighting helicopters were grounded for lack of spare parts. So go down the list. All of this and more. These are the things that have been building for decade that drove a million Lebanese out into the streets to demand the resignation of the Entire government.

So is it that the state can't do a better job or just that it's not doing a better job? Does it have the money to solve the problems that you're describing?

Well, the government would argue that it would like to fix these things, but it can't afford to. Public debt is more than 150% of GDP. Just servicing that debt eats up about half of government revenue. And so the argument from the cabinet is we don't have money for capital investments right now, but there is money. Lebanon has access to. Donors at a conference in Paris last April, pledged $11 billion in aid to Lebanon. What it had to do in return was implement some governance reforms, again around things like the electric company. But it hasn't done that. The cabinet has been basically paralyzed for the past 18 months. And there's now some worries that these donors who pledged all of this money will lose interest and decide to go elsewhere. The Cabinet hasn't been able to do anything because these systems of patronage and cronyism in Lebanon are so deeply entrenched.

But have the protests sort of shaken any of that up? Has the government done anything about them so far?

The government so far has stalled for time. When the protests began, Prime Minister Saad Hariri asked for 72 hours to discuss economic reforms with his cabinet. And of course, this was met with a lot of skepticism in the streets. The government has had 18 months to implement the reforms it agreed to at the Paris conference. How much could it really do in three days? And it turns out, not much. It proposed a very modest package of reforms. There was a promise not to impose new taxes in the 2020 budget. Ministers and MPs agreed to take a 50% pay cut in sort of a populist gesture. There was a little bit of spending for social programs, housing loans, things like that, not much more. And some vague talk as well about privatizing the telecoms and electric industries and setting up an anti corruption body. But all of that was quite vague. It fell far short of what the protesters were demanding.

And so that hasn't done anything to placate the protesters.

It hasn't. The demonstrations have continued. Protesters say the only thing that will make them go home at this point is the resignation of this cabinet and its replacement with sort of a technocratic government that will actually implement reforms. Lebanese feel they've been here before. There have been protests. The government has promised to fix things and it never has.

And what about how this looks kind of regionally? Are there any neighboring countries leaders who might be able to intervene to support the beleaguered government.

Historically, when Lebanon has had economic crises, and it has one now, it's been the Gulf states that have stepped in. Of course, this is a country that is sort of pulled back and forth between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And so the Gulf states, as they often do, like to practice checkbook diplomacy in Lebanon. The problem right now is they're not feeling so generous. For a start, all of the Gulf states have their own economic problems at home, and they're spending less money on foreign aid in general. And they look at the current Lebanese government as being too sympathetic to Hezbollah. And so they're frustrated and they're less willing to give aid than they were before.

Well, I mean, where do you see this heading in Syria? Next door, anti government protests have essentially descended into a massive civil war. Do you think this too might turn violent?

That has always been the argument for Lebanon's politicians. Of course, Lebanon went through its own brutal civil war in the 1980s. It ended with a sectarian power sharing agreement that divvied up the top jobs in the government amongst the country's religious groups and left certain families with outsized control of not only the government, but also patronage networks. And their argument has always been, whether you like this system or not, the alternative is chaos. The alternative is a return to war. What we've seen in these protests, though, is they've been decidedly non sectarian. We've seen almost no one even waving the flags of individual political parties or religious factions, let alone using any kind of sectarian language. It's been really a national movement. And so I think this argument that it's either us or chaos no longer resonates with the Lebanese the way it might have 15, 20 years ago.

So there is certainly disquiet and potential for greater conflict. It doesn't look like it's heading that way.

No, it doesn't. Everyone seems to be working quite hard to avoid that, actually. We've seen a bit of thuggish behavior from the protesters, smashing storefronts and things like that. And there have been cases of the police and the security services being heavy handed. But on the whole, this has been quite peaceful. There were scenes yesterday of the army, which had been deployed to try and keep one of the main highways clear, embracing protesters. One soldier was actually crying at having to be deployed and standing against his own people. He was then consoled by one of the protesters. And so everyone is working quite hard, I think, to try and keep this peaceful and to keep it non sectarian, really. The one thing that has managed to unite all of the Lebanese, regardless of their background, seems to be discussed at this government.

Greg, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

In life, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco loved pomp and grandeur.

When Franco's children mock march on parade, they are already well on their way.

To the goal their dictator has set for them.

New conquistadors pledged to restore to Spain its ancient glories.

Throughout his four decades in power, he reveled in carefully orchestrated military parades.

As a crack unit of paratroopers passes in review, the Cordillo looks on with pride. 18 years of peace and rebuilding.

After his death in 1975, Franco was no more understated.

The Valley of the Fallen is a grandiose monument carved out of a mountain near Madrid, topped by a huge cross, which is one and a half times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

Michael Reed is a senior editor at the Economist, covering Latin America and Spain.

It was built over 19 years on the orders of Francisco Franco, General Francois, Spain's dictator for 40 years. It commemorates his victory in the Spanish Civil War. But it's also a vast cemetery, and there are more than 30,000 war dead buried there. In the basilica which has been carved out of the mountain, there are two named tombs. One was the founder of Spain's fascist party, the Falange. And the other is a Franco himself who was buried there when he died in his bed. But all that will change today because his remains are going to be exhumed and moved to a quiet public cemetery on the outskirts of Madrid where his wife is buried.

Why is he being exhumed? Why is he being moved?

Well, because over the last two decades or so, a growing number of Spaniards have come to see it as an aberration that he should be in the Valley of the Fallen. He did not die in the Civil war, firstly. Secondly, the monument was built with forced labor, and it is an aberration that a dictator should be so publicly commemorated in this way. And Spain's Congress in 2017 passed a resolution, not unanimously but with overwhelming support, saying that he should be moved. And Pedro Sanchez, Spain's Socialist Prime Minister since last year when he took office, promised to do so.

You say that there wasn't a complete agreement in Congress. What about more generally? Is there opposition to this plan?

Well, the government has faced opposition from two main sources. The Valley of the Fallen is actually administered by Benedictine monks who have a monastery there. Of the monastery was opposed. He happens to be a Franco sympathizer. And Franco's descendants there are 22 grandchildren and great grandchildren, including their partners. And they took legal action because they argued, well, if he's going to be moved, we want him buried in the crypt of the cathedral in Madrid, which the government obviously didn't want because it's an even more prominent place than the Valley of the Fallen. But firstly, the Vatican slapped down the prior, and secondly, the Supreme Court last month unanimously ruled that the government has the right to go ahead and rebury him where it thinks fit.

Well, what about Spain's people?

Well, I think, you know, polls suggest that more people are in favour of moving him than are against the majority. From the centre to the left, people tend to be in favour of. The only outright political opposition has come from Vox, a far right party which considers this to be a profanation of Franco's tomb. The mainstream conservative party prefers not to talk about the issue and says it's kind of waste of time and they want to look forward. And that's because historically, they descend from the moderates in the Franco regime who, when Franco died, engineered the transition to democracy.

And what will happen to the Valley of the Fallen once Franco is gone?

Well, the socialists want to turn it into a museum of memory about the Civil war. I think other people would object to that on the basis that it's really a matter for history. And history and memory are not the same. And there has been a huge amount of historical scholarship in Spain over the last 40 years about the civil war, about the dictatorship, about Franco's brutality and repression after the war. But the society, to some extent, it's moved on. A majority of Spaniards have no memory of Franco and to some extent it hasn't moved on in the sense that it was a civil war. And civil wars are uniquely divisive and, you know, families were divided. And the notion that you could reach somehow an official version of the history of the civil war and dictatorship is. But it's hard to credit, and I think it's too soon. Still, Even though it's 40 years, perhaps eventually it will become a matter on which there is considerable historical consensus.

Mike, thank you very much for joining us.

Not at all.

There are a lot of things that radio DJs are already great at. Spinning the latest pop hit, filling the drive time slot with chat. But now the government of Thailand is turning to hundreds of them for a different purpose.

In Thailand, the Ministry of Health has hired more than 500 DJs to spread safe sex information on the radio and on social media.

Sarah Donilon writes about foreign affairs for The Economist.

The alarming trend that prompted this is that the adolescent fertility rate is shot up in Thailand.

What's the state of sex education? As it stands now?

Almost all schools in Thailand now have some form of sex education, but the quality is inconsistent. Audit has found that much of the teaching is in the form of a lecture and sometimes comes in the biology curriculum. So it's much less about avoiding risky behavior. And teachers and students are both quite uncomfortable. But in the past, Thailand has been a pioneer in sex education and family planning. So in the mid-1960s, the government started experimenting with family planning programs and formalized it into a national initiative. In 1970, which was a big success. At that point, fertility rate was 5.7 children per woman. Now it's 1.5. In 1970, the contraceptive prevalence rate was 14%. Now it's more than 75%. And then it had more success when it was trying to curb the HIV transmission rate. But as a result, demographics are askew in two ways. So as the overall birth rate has gone down, the teen pregnancy has gone up.

Is the government doing anything else? Are they just leaving it to the DJs?

Yeah, mercifully, no. So what's most notable about this is it really is a whole of government initiative. There was a groundbreaking law in 2016 which guarantees adolescents, which are defined as between the ages of 10 and 20, with the right to information and the right to contraception. And that was not just a health ministry initiative. It involved five ministries, including those of Education and Labor, which to me is an acknowledgement that the response to this is highly pragmatic. It acknowledges that teen pregnancy harms the young women themselves, who sometimes seek out unsafe abortions. But it also creates instability in the country, often because of stigma or financial and family pressures. Young women who get pregnant drop out of school, or they either take a pause or discontinue their education altogether. And that hurts their employment prospects for the rest of their lives. And that's not a good thing for productivity in Thailand as a whole.

And what else are they trying?

So in addition to the DJs, the government has tried sending health ministry officials to give lessons to young people on young love. They've added sex education questions to national standardized exams. And thanks to the 2016 law, all adolescents can get free contraception.

It sounds as if it's likely to work then. I mean, do you think that it will?

Yeah, there's reason to be optimistic. The trends are certainly encouraging. The adolescent fertility rate peaked in 2012, and it's since steadily declined and there's also political will behind this. As I mentioned, several ministries have sponsored it, and the prime minister himself chaired the committee associated with the groundbreaking bill. At the same time, there's kind of a disconnect between the policy and the rhetoric and sort of social norms that have contributed to this problem in the first place. The prime minister himself has said things like scantily clad women are like unwrapped sweets. He has said that gender equality will make Thai society deteriorate. And so while the adolescent fertility rate may be going down, those sorts of traditional norms I think will take much longer to deal with.

So there's this government program. Is there also a sort of private sector element to it?

Companies are also getting in on it. So the premise of one of the most popular ones, Judy's, which has been downloaded more than 720,000 times, is that colorful condoms are life saving shields for humans against aliens. So that's less explicitly informational than some of the official UNICEF initiatives. But nonetheless, the hope is that the information and the message get across.

Sarah, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you so much.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.

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