Beirut: Ballots cast in the 325 Mount Lebanon municipalities of Baabda, Jbeil, Kisrwan, Aley, Chouf, and Metn reached 56 per cent, as leading Christian parties enthusiastically confronted each other.
According to the Ministry of Interior, 834,768 voters were eligible to participate in Sunday’s polls, dispersed along 3,217 polling stations. There were 6,790 candidates running for office. Of the 325 municipalities in contention, 45 were decided by acclamation, because they faced no opposition.
Preliminary results indicated that Phalange Party scored the most impressive victories, a sign of both effective on-the-ground electoral machinery as well as stand alone candidacies, even if compromises were made in certain areas and alliances drawn with rivals in others.
In Sin Al Fil, for example, incumbent mayor Nabil Kahaleh swept the town’s 18-member municipal council, on a list backed by the Phalange, deputy Michel Murr and local families against a rival ticket supported by the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and the Lebanese Forces (LF). Murr enjoyed a long-standing presence in Metn, where he teamed with various allies to score victories in about 40 villages, including Brummana, Beit Mery and Baabdat.
One of the anomalies of Sunday’s elections was the contradictory alliances that saw the LF and FPM join hands in certain areas and confront each other elsewhere. This was also the case with other parties, which highlighted existing divisions and, perhaps, a test run by everyone to actually weigh more accurately their respective bases of support.
In the southern Beirut suburb of Hadath, for example, a candidate list headed by mayor George Aoun won every seat of the town’s local council. Aoun’s FPM-supported list ran against a rival ticket headed by Antoine Karam, who was backed by the LF and the Phalange. When the actual numbers for both sides are published, everyone will know which party can count on how many votes in each district, information that will presumably be very useful in the contemplated parliamentary elections.
On Sunday, the most intriguing battles were fought in Jounieh as well the southern Beirut suburb of Ghobeiri, where acute rivalries surfaced and that may well determine which electoral law may be adopted by parliament (the current 1960 paradigm or an updated one).
In Jounieh, the electoral battle was contentious, and saw the FPM’s Michel Aoun visit the city on Saturday to rally voters and plead with them to vote en masse for the “Jounieh’s Dignity” list headed by Juan Hobeish.
The FPM teamed with the Phalange and other prominent local families against the rival ticket “Jounieh’s Renewal,” headed by Fouad Boueri.
The latter was supported by the LF and several local families, as well as former deputies Mansour Al Bon and Farid Haikal Al Khazen. Neemat Frem, son of a late deputy and Cabinet minister, as well as a major business leader in his own right, backed “Jounieh’s Renewal” too. On Monday morning, Boueri conceded that Hobeish and his 18-strong team won by 110 votes, although these were not the official Ministry of Interior results.
In Ghobeiri, a Hezbollah-dominated neighbourhood, a list of 21 candidates backed by the party and the Amal Movement confronted unprecedented competition from a rival ticket formed by 21 members from among leading Shiite families to control the municipal council. Initial results indicated that the Hezbollah-backed list was leading in the polls, though barely.
Several bright spots emerged during the day, including in Jbeil, where the incumbent and popular Mayor Ziad Hawwat won an easy victory (90 per cent of votes cast) against Claude Marje, an FPM member backed by the secular group “Citizens Within a State.”
Former President Amine Gemayel’s daughter, Nicole, and her list won Bikfaya’s 15-member municipal council in what was one of the rare spots where a woman led. Amine Gemayel declared that he would have “favoured the staging of timely parliamentary and presidential elections,” although he underscored that “the municipal elections confirmed that the Lebanese held onto their [constitutional] rights.”
In Choueifat, an anticipated battle between rival lists supported by the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and the Lebanese Democratic Party (LDP), two predominantly Druze groups led by Walid Junblatt and Talal Arslan respectively, produced a truncated victory because many voters failed to commit to complete lists and, apparently, crossed out various names. The LDP seems to have secured 15 seats while the PSP won three though the final tally may be slightly different.
If the Phalange seemed to have demonstrated its proficiency with a well-oiled electoral machinery in place, the FPM-LF coalition failed to make a dent, perhaps best illustrated in the hotly contested Deir Al Qamar elections in the Chouf. A Chamoun family stronghold, the ancient Chouf town produced Lebanon’s second President, Camille Chamoun, but was caught in a dilemma. Dory Chamoun, the leader of the National Liberal Party, aligned himself with the Phalange against George Adwan and a list backed by the LF, the FPM and the PSP. According to party sources, the town could well have a split council, with 12 LF-FPM and six NLP-Phalange winners.
Like the first day of voting in the capital and Biqa‘ Valley, election monitors recorded violations in Mount Lebanon too, where 569 infringements occurred, according to the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections. Most (158) were reported in Baabda, followed by the (124), Metn (112), Aley (108), Kisrwan (105), and Jbeil (54). Six individuals were arrested over various bribery charges, paying $200-2,000 per vote, while the head of a polling station in Jbeil village of Tortaj was apprehended after he was found with three ballots in his pockets. It was unclear whether authorities arrested these criminals before or after the Al Jadeed television station aired a video showing an apparent FPM-Phalange list supporter paying $600 to one of its undercover correspondents after she convinced him that she could provide three votes for the list.
Al Jadeed further reported that a dispute erupted on Sunday between supporters of rival candidates in Kisrwan town of Afqa between Hezbollah and Amal supporters, as cousins running in rival electoral lists required the intervention of the army to contain the unrest, although this was the only place where such clashes apparently occurred.
The next battle is scheduled for May 22 when municipal elections will occur in South Lebanon and Nabatiyyah.
