ABSTRACT
The cost of living in the Lebanon rose by at least twenty-two per cent from 1955 to 1960, and the demand for increases in wages is thus understandable. The Lebanese economy is developing fast but un-evenly. While there are signs of great prosperity and readiness to invest in and around Beirut, whole sections of the population and wide areas of the country lag behind in economic development. The parties and their programmes are still relatively unimportant in the Lebanon. In the ‘Parliament of Reconciliation’ that was supposed to remove the last traces of the revolution and counter-revolution of 1958 former enemies sat more or less peacefully side by side as if nothing had happened. Earlier Presidents of the Republic frequently pulled strings behind the scenes when parliamentary debates were in progress, and exerted a decisive influence on the government and its functioning.
