Even the Future Movement is now disillusioned with Solidere
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/even-future-movement-now-disillusioned-solidere
Future Movement ministers, MPs, and party officials have found this atmosphere to be a good opportunity to express their overwhelming disillusionment with the Beirut Central District, the “crown jewel” of Hariri’s political and economic project, on account of its current dismal state. Indeed, the company that had irreversibly altered the features of the heart of Beirut “did not bother to put up decorations that would be fitting for the capital and its inhabitants, and put instead a less than ordinary tree whose cost was actually shared with the municipality,” according to a leading figure in the Future Movement. He added, “The Solidere ordinary general assembly session did not distribute dividends this year, so would a few thousand dollars have broken its back if the money was spent on holiday decorations for the city center?”
The subpar decorations in downtown Beirut, where the company is “sovereign,” is only the tip of the iceberg of the reservations some in the Future Movement have against Solidere and its performance. The Future Movement official said that there have been meetings held in the past months, bringing together Future Movement ministers, MPs, and officials, to study the era of Rafik Hariri’s tenure, and both its achievements and failures. He said that Solidere occupied a large part of the discussions and criticisms, and pointed out that there was a consensus that all that is happening the central district overseen by the company “is preventing the Beirut city center from becoming a tourist landmark and a zone that attracts investors as the martyred prime minister had planned it to be.”
