The Free Patriotic Movement launched a political and media campaign on social media targeting the Minister of Energy and Water, Joe Al-Sadi, under the hashtag “#He Will Sade,” putting the issue of the cost of electricity and nutrition at the heart of the confrontation, in the latest chapter of the open debate about the management of the sector and the ministry’s current options.
The campaign relied on a series of designs carrying direct messages to the Lebanese, one of which focused on comparing three numbers that it said summed up the reality of the electrical cost, noting that the cost of a kilowatt of neighborhood generators is about 55 cents, compared to 27 cents for Electricity of Lebanon, while it placed the cost of what it called “temporary factories” at about 15 cents per kilowatt.
Under the title “It is enough for people to know three numbers,” the movement tried, through comparison, to draw attention to the difference between the cost that the citizen bears from different energy sources, while another design carried a more direct question: “What are they saving the treasury about?” They are emptying our pockets!”, in a clear political accusation that the current sector management choices do not reflect an alleviation of the burdens on citizens.
The movement chose the hashtag “#It_will_result” for the campaign, in a verbal play on the name of the Minister of Energy, in parallel with other messages that focused on the Zouk plant, as on Thursday evening, OTV had sent a direct message to the minister under the title: “The role of the Zouk plant will echo!”, which reflects the transition of the confrontation from scattered criticism to an organized media campaign centered around the operation of the plants and the cost of producing electricity.
The campaign comes at a time when the electricity issue is still one of the most sensitive livelihood issues for the Lebanese, especially with the continuing limited supply hours from the Electricité du Liban and a large percentage of citizens and institutions being forced to rely on private generators or solar energy systems to cover the hours of outage.
The Zouk plant had returned to the forefront strongly during the total outage crisis in August 2025, when a malfunction in one of the high-voltage transformers in the main transfer station led to the collapse of the electrical network, before the Electricité du Liban began to gradually reconnect the production groups in Zahrani, Deir Ammar, and the Zouk and Jiyeh engines to the network.
On the other hand, Al-Saddi offers a different approach to addressing the electricity crisis, as he has stressed since taking over the ministry that the priority must be for sustainable solutions instead of temporary solutions, and he links the improvement of the sector to building modern plants that rely on natural gas, improving collection, reducing waste, and expanding the role of renewable energy. He had announced that Lebanon needs to establish two new plants in Al-Zahrani and Deir Ammar, in parallel with the rehabilitation of hydroelectric facilities and the development of the sector’s infrastructure.
The Minister also initiated a process to conduct a forensic audit of the files of the Ministry of Energy and its affiliated institutions, with work to begin gradually from specific files in the electricity sector, in a step he placed within the government’s program to reorganize the sector and enhance oversight over it.
However, the relationship between Al-Sada and the Free Patriotic Movement has remained governed by an intense political debate since the transfer of the energy portfolio to the current government, as the minister on previous occasions criticized the performance of the ministers who succeeded the ministry during the past years, especially the movement’s ministers, holding the previous policies partly responsible for the accumulation of the sector’s crises and debts, while the movement accused the current administration of not taking advantage of available production capabilities and of a decline in the level of nutrition.
This clash carries additional sensitivity because the Free Patriotic Movement ran the Ministry of Energy for many years and made the electricity file one of the most prominent headlines of its government policies, while Al-Sadi came to the ministry against the backdrop of promises to restructure the sector and change the way it is managed, which made the results of its performance a direct subject for comparison and political accountability between the two parties.
The numbers presented by the Current campaign regarding the cost of a kilowatt are still part of the campaign’s political message, and the publications circulating have not been accompanied by unified calculation details that allow for a direct technical comparison between the cost of generators, the Lebanese Electricity Tariff, and the cost of production in what it described as “temporary factories,” as the method of calculating each of them differs according to the price of fuel, the cost of operation and maintenance, waste, collection, and tariff items.
Accordingly, it seems that the “#It_will_echo” campaign will not remain just a hashtag on social media sites, but rather indicates the return of the electricity issue to constitute a major political confrontation between the Free Patriotic Movement and the Minister of Energy, with each party seeking to hold the other responsible for the reality of the sector, while the most important criterion for the Lebanese remains much simpler: the number of hours of electricity that reaches homes and the cost they pay at the end of each month.
