For the first time in Lebanese history, a woman minister handed power to another woman. May Chidiac, a former broadcaster who became an icon of press freedom and anti-Syrian resistance when assassins attempted to take her life in 2005, took the reins of the office of the Minister of State for Administrative Development from Inaya Ezzeddine, an MP for Tyre.
It's 4 p.m. on a Thursday, and Chidiac has squeezed in an interview between marathon budget sessions in Parliament.
Since becoming minister, Chidiac has been working on a slew of initiatives from her tiny office -- one of the smallest in Cabinet -- in an attempt to remake the face of the Lebanese bureaucracy.
Looking to clamp down on corruption, Chidiac is finalizing OMSAR's strategy and plans to submit it to Cabinet "very soon".
OMSAR was allocated just under $24 million in the draft budget passed by Cabinet.
Chidiac's Lebanese Forces were opposed to the budget, saying it didn't go far enough to reform state finances.
On July 2, 11 ministers allied with Bassil's Free Patriotic Movement, including Gharib and Minister of State for Foreign Trade Hasan Mrad, failed to show up to a Cabinet meeting.
Chidiac sees more sinister forces at work.
The issue of Syrian influence in Lebanon is highly personal for Chidiac.
Chidiac says Syria is now trying to reassert itself in Lebanon, 14 years after its withdrawal.
Most Syrians are Muslim, and Chidiac sees unbridled freedom for women to pass nationality on to their children as an unnatural threat to the place of Christians in Lebanon.
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