Polling stations closed yesterday in the south in the second round of Lebanon's first general elections free of Syria's grip in three decades, with the coalition of the Hezbollah group assured of victory.
At the closure of the booths at 6pm (1500 GMT), there were no official figures for turnout which stood at around 20 per cent at midday and was expected not to exceed 35 per cent, according to candidates.
The coalition of Hezbollah and its rival Shiite movement Amal are set to steamroll the opposition in the south, with a pledge to keep on with the armed resistance against Israel.
Many in the Shiie heartland see a ballot for Hezbollah as a vote for allowing the group to keep its weapons as resistance against neighbouring Israel which occupied the south for 22 years.
"I voted for Hezbollah and Amal because they protect us and stand in the face of the Israelis and Americans," Hussain Awada, leaving a polling station in the port city of Tyre, said.
Staunchly anti-Israel Hezbollah, which Washington labels a "terrorist" group, and the more moderate Amal are the dominant forces among the Shiites, Lebanon's largest sect.
But voting got off to a slow start as the Amal-Hezbollah alliance, dubbed the "steamroller", has already won 6 of the 23 seats in the south by default due to a lack of challengers.
Damascus backed both groups during and after the 1975-1990 civil war, and Shiites largely stayed away from anti-Syrian street protests that swept Beirut after the February 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Those protests, which united Christians, Sunnis and Druze, forced Syria to bow to world pressure and end its military presence in Lebanon in April.
