How was today’s demonstration an example of democracy?
For me, it was very encouraging to see — particularly as someone who covered Lebanon in the ’80s and even the ’70s, and saw the civil war and the subsequent catastrophe of the Israeli invasion here. Earlier we saw masses of people — Christian, Druse and some Sunnis — coming out for one idea, to move democracy forward. And then today, we saw a very different look from people who you might call conservative, coming out in huge numbers to express their preferences in a peaceful way. You have a debate here, as you do in many societies between people who want to move forward and people who are more comfortable staying where they are. That’s really what you have and that’s what the divide is. But there was no sense at all that it was anything other than a positive exchange of ideas in the streets through demonstrations, rather than returning to the old habits of forming militias and having militias shoot it out at each other on street corners. From that perspective, it passed the first test
