By Timour Azhari
MTEIN, Lebanon, March 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As a career musician who has played brass and wind instruments for most of his life, Joseph al-Hajj, 80, was particularly anxious to protect his most precious asset – his lungs – when the coronavirus swept into Lebanon last year.
Hunkered down in his modest home in the mountains for months on end, Hajj said he pinned his hopes on the global race to develop a vaccine against the respiratory disease.
So last month, when he saw lawmakers younger than himself jumping the vaccination queue, he felt impelled to fight for his right to be vaccinated – filing suit against the health ministry with help from his son, a lawyer.
In a nation where corruption and state mismanagement are widely blamed for causing a socioeconomic crisis, Hajj said his patience snapped when he read about the MPs’ vaccinations, which violated the terms of the national immunization plan that prioritized the over-75s.
“I’m not going to lie, I’m very upset,” Hajj said, sitting in his sunny garden in Mtein, which lies about 30 km (18 miles) northeast of the capital, Beirut.
“I’ve been waiting, waiting to go out again and play at parties and bring people together,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, saying he decided to go to the courts because “we had no confidence in the state anymore and I want my rights”.
But in what Hajj’s son, Fadi, called a “small victory for accountability”, a judge ordered the ministry last week to vaccinate him within 48 hours, saying it had violated his right to life and health as well as the principle of equal access.
“When politicians protect the perpetrators and are this shameless, there is only one authority where you can seek refuge: the judiciary,” said Fadi al-Hajj.
Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan has defended the early vaccination of the lawmakers as a “sovereign decision” and the ministry has filed an appeal against the court ruling.
It said it “does not discriminate between citizens, rather, it gives them all equal opportunities to access the vaccine,” according to a court filing seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The ministry, which said after the ruling that Hajj would be vaccinated “sooner or later”, did not respond to a request for comment.
