Beirut: Hezbollah and its political allies won just over half the seats in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, boosting an Iranian-backed movement fiercely opposed to Israel and underlining Tehran’s growing regional influence.
The results add to the risks facing Lebanon, reliant on US military help and hoping to secure billions of dollars in international aid and loans to revive its stagnant economy.
Branded a terrorist group by the United States, Hezbollah has grown in strength since joining the war in Syria in support of President Bashar Al Assad in 2012.
Its powerful position in Lebanon reflects Tehran’s ascendancy in territory stretching through Iraq and Syria to Beirut.
The new government, like the outgoing one, is expected to include all the main parties.
Talks over cabinet posts are expected to take time.
The election was held under a complex new law that redrew constituency boundaries and changed the electoral system from winner-takes-all to a proportional one.
The staunchly anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces, a Christian party, appears to have emerged as a big winner, nearly doubling its MPs to 16 from eight.
Hezbollah, along with allied groups and individuals, secured at least 67 seats.
Hezbollah’s allies include the Shiite Amal Movement led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and the Christian Free Patriotic Movement established by President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally since 2006 who has said its arsenal is needed to defend Lebanon.
Hezbollah-backed Sunnis did well in Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon, strongholds of Hariri’s Future Movement.
The pro-Hezbollah Al Akhbar newspaper declared the election “a slap” for Hariri on its front page.
Hezbollah-backed winners include Jamil Al Sayyed, a retired Shiite general and former Lebanese intelligence chief who is a close friend of Al Assad. Al Sayyed was one of the most powerful men in Lebanon in the 15 years of Syrian domination that followed the 1975-90 civil war.
At least five other figures who held office during that era returned to parliament for the first time since Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Sa’ad’s father, in 2005.
Faisal Karami, the son of the late pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami, won a seat for the first time.
Losing stronghold
Hezbollah, however, lost ground in one of its strongholds, the Baalbek-Hermel constituency. Two of the 10 seats there were won by its opponents, one going to the Lebanese Forces and the other to Future.
It failed to win a Shiite seat in the ancient coastal town of Byblos.
Turnout was 49.2 per cent, down from 54 per cent the last time legislative elections were held nine years ago.
Of the independent candidates running against the political establishment, only one won a seat in Beirut.
Lebanon should have held a parliamentary election in 2013 but MPs instead voted to extend their own term because leaders could not agree on a new parliamentary election law.
An anti-Hezbollah alliance led by Hariri and backed by Saudi Arabia won a majority in parliament in 2009.
But that ‘March 14’ alliance has disintegrated and Saudi Arabia has switched its attention and resources to confronting Iran in other parts of the region, notably Yemen.
Hariri lost nearly a third of his 33 seats.
Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces leader, said the results showed there was a “popular ground” that backs March 14 and would “give us strength and a push to fix the path much more than we were able to in the past years”.
Geagea is Hezbollah’s most prominent Lebanese Christian opponent. He led the Lebanese Forces militia in the last years of the civil war, during which he was an adversary of Aoun.
Weapons issue
The question of Hezbollah’s weapons has slipped down the political agenda in Lebanon in recent years.
Hezbollah has grown militarily more powerful since 2012, deploying its fighters to Syria and Iraq where it has fought in support of Iranian allies.
Hariri, who led years of political conflict with the group, says it is an issue to be resolved regionally through dialogue.
The Lebanon vote is to be followed on May 12 by an Iraqi election that is also set to underline Iran’s reach, with one of three pro-Tehran Shiite leaders set to become prime minister.
Enhanced Hezbollah sway over Lebanon will likely alarm the United States, which arms and trains the Lebanese army.
But the group and its allies do not have a two-thirds majority that would allow them to pass big decisions alone such as changing the constitution.
