Order of the day: Very disappointing engineers

BEIRUT - After my graduation as an engineer and, as an active student during my university years, I joined the Beirut Order of Engineers and Architects hoping this would constitute a natural prolongation of my involvement in the political, social and professional life in my country.

Unfortunately, my first participation in the life of the order was disappointing.

The first contact came during the order's primary elections held last April. I was first contacted by a running candidate looking for support. I replied that I needed her CV and her platform to make up my mind.

A few days later she sent those two documents and, to my surprise, her program didn't include the concerns she would voice or the steps she would follow to achieve her agenda but rather a medley of sophisticated description of how she views the order as an asset for the engineers that they should preserve.

Apart from this candidate, no other candidates contacted me. In order to get the full picture I started contacting some political parties I knew were involved in such activities. It was only at that point that I understood that, the system works as follows: The order having some 27, 000 members, it is all about politics and only politics.

Don't get me wrong here, I am not against political interferences in the life of syndicates. I truly believe such professional bodies have an important political role to play in the country in addition to their natural roles of improving the standards of the profession.

But what was worst was that the political alliances themselves were based on, or allow me to say, were not based on anything. Thus, on one hand you had the list of Hizbullah, the Free Patriotic Movement and the Democratic Forum and on the other hand the list of Future Youth, Amal, the Lebanese Communist Party and the Lebanese Forces. The later alliance is that which never existed before and would never exist in the future.

Going back to the issue of agendas, on the election day, it seemed to me that the platform I thought was weak and not up to the challenge was the best platform since it was the only one. In fact none of the campaigns offices set up in front of the order's building had an electoral agenda for its candidates. Is it because there is a kind of consensus on the goals to be achieved? Not at all, again a paradox.

In fact some of the running candidates do in fact have a platform. I mean a serious one. Yet they never print it out, distribute it and run according to its outline. They only advocate it orally.

Some of the controversial issues debated was pertaining to the prerogatives of the president of the order, budget allocations, regulations of the health insurance plans and the role of the order on the national level.

Taking sides in the above-mentioned issues is not the basis for elections as it seems. This might be due to the fact that a platform was not worth much in the elections or maybe because the complicated political alliances made it hard to find an agreement on a unified platform even within the same list.

For those who thought that syndicates and student governments should set the example for a change to come on the national level, it seemed that such bodies have the same problems as that of the outside world: interference of political parties, the absence of well thought-of agendas and the lack of involvement on the part of students and/or engineers.

As a new member of the order of engineers, I ask myself: Why do we have two orders of engineers in Lebanon? Why do most engineers perceive the order as an insurance company only? What is the role to be played by young members in unions? Can such democratic bodies be the driving force for change on the national level?