We Are Now Being Sold Cheap in the Marketplace of Development!

In recent days, a chorus of self-proclaimed saviors has emerged people claiming concern for rebuilding the country and repairing what wars have destroyed. They parade slogans of reconstruction and development, promising us the “Return of Life”, announcing projects underway, others supposedly completed, and larger ones allegedly designed to be the biggest in Libya  even in the region. They demand multi-billion budgets to execute their “vision.”

For reasons I cannot fully explain, every time I see these glossy slogans and dazzling promises, I remember an old story that was meant as a lesson, not entertainment the story of the Trojan Horse.

That massive wooden horse the Trojans believed was a gift of victory and a sign the war had ended they rejoiced, welcomed it into their fortified city that no enemy army could breach. Little did they know an army lay hidden in its belly, waiting for the moment to burn their city to the ground.

oday in Libya, these announced reconstruction and development projects east and west alike look to me like the Trojan Horse of our age. A gift loaded with corruption, welcomed joyfully by the unsuspecting. What lies inside this shining horse?

Organized theft, shadowy deals, absurdly inflated costs. Often, these projects are either useless and unfit for purpose, cheaply built and collapsing on first use, or entirely imaginary existing only on paper and in the bank accounts of officials and their followers. They stuff their pockets with billions allocated for illusions sold as “development.”

The ordinary citizen celebrates at the sight of a crane, a paved road, or a bridge over a busy street. They believe life is returning unaware that they themselves are paying the price from their livelihood and their children’s bread.

The reckless expansion in spending on fake or overpriced projects is one of the fuels feeding the fire of inflation the fire consuming the Libyan dinar day after day. Look at the exchange rate plummeting. Look at the poverty line creeping forward, swallowing new segments of society that never imagined themselves reaching this point.

The fall of the dinar means the fall of your salary’s value, the fall of your savings, the fall of your purchasing power while prices soar locally and globally. You pay more for less.

This is the true cost of the reconstruction and “Return of Life” projects we ushered in with joy only to discover that they drain our lives and are financed from our veins.

Yet the proposed solutions resemble attempts to extinguish fire with gasoline.

The Central Bank, Audit Bureau, and governments have aligned waiting for formal approval and Aguila Saleh has already championed it in undisclosed parliamentary sessions as the “magic cure” for runaway spending: cutting fuel subsidies.

Another Trojan Horse.

It is offered as a remedy for wasted billions but its belly holds devastation for citizens.

Lifting fuel subsidies means instant and extreme increases in the price of everything transportation, electricity, basic goods. Who will pay?

The citizen, of course the first and last casualty in this corruption formula, especially in the absence of any social safety net in a fragile rentier economy dependent solely on oil.

Thus, the Libyan citizen living in this contemporary epic is the modern Trojan City his city burns again and again, consumed by armies of corruption hidden in the bellies of gilded gifts he himself welcomed.

Who believes a reconstruction plan serves them, while watching with their own eyes east and west leaders racing to plunder public wealth under its name? They compete in filling their pockets while citizens’ pockets empty day by day.

Isn’t this the essence of the Trojan Horse deception rejoicing over the visible gift while ignoring the army waiting inside to devour the city?Beware, Libyans.Beware poisoned gifts.Beware corrupted solutions.

Your livelihood is stolen under the name of rebuilding your country, your future and your children’s future auctioned off cheap in shiny packaging.Let your vigilance match the danger.

Let your voices against corruption drown the theatre of fake achievements before history records us as another nation that destroyed itself with its own hands because it naïvely welcomed poisoned gifts wrapped as “development, reconstruction, and return of life” a mirage the thirsty mistake for water