January 24, 2007	Wednesday	Muharram 04, 1428

BEIRUT: The Hezbollah-led opposition campaign to bring down Lebanon’s government has shifted gear in advance of a Jan 25 aid conference in Paris. The weapon now being wielded by both sides is marketing.

In recent days, roadside posters and display advertisements in newspapers have sought to promote Prime Minister Fuad Siniora’s programme of economic reforms that will be presented to the Paris III international donor meeting on Thursday.

“Whether it’s a five per cent rise (in VAT) or nothing, what’s that to me?” asks a fashionable young woman from a poster in Beirut.

The reply underneath? “The rise, young lady, will lead to more jobs and better salaries. It’s the figures that make reform, not talking about it.” The poster campaign was commissioned by the cabinet “to explain the reform plan to the people ahead of the conference,” spokesman Asma Andraos told AFP.

The reform plan, adopted at the beginning of the month, foresees a progressive rise in value-added tax and privatisations. It has been slammed by the opposition, which believes that battling corruption and inflation should be the priority.

Headed by the Shia Hezbollah movement and also including the party of Christian former general Michel Aoun, the opposition has launched a counter-campaign.

“So the government wants to talk figures? So do we,” said Georges Abboud of Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement.

One opposition poster reads: “Paris I, 26 billion dollars... Paris II, 32 billion dollars... Paris III, 45 billion dollars..,” referring to the soaring public debt which has reached around 180 per cent of gross domestic product – despite similar donor meetings in recent years.

“So what? The opposition’s saying nothing new. These figures are included in the reform plan. Maybe they should read it,” countered Andraos.

Winning over public opinion is the aim of both sides in the political arm-wrestling contest that erupted with the resignation last November of six government ministers of the opposition, which wants a new cabinet in which it would have a minority veto.—AFP