Lebanon rations power after using up fuel supplies in elections
▶ Each lost seats to small opposition parties in the parliamentary election
Lebanon’s national electricity company will make further cuts to its output in the coming days after burning through most of its fuel supplies during Sunday’s election.
Electricity du Liban said it had “consumed its fuel reserves at a faster pace” during the voting period.
The company’s output has not matched demand since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990. Production has decreased further following the country’s economic collapse in 2019.
Residents of the capital Beirut receive two or three hours of state power a day. Lebanese must use expensive private generators for a few extra hours of electricity.
Nationwide power cuts lasting for hours have occurred on several occasions in recent months.
EDL did not say by how much output had been increased during the electoral period. On Monday, Interior Minister Bassam Al Mawlawi denied rumours of power cuts at polling stations the previous day.
“In order to avoid falling into complete darkness, additional precautionary measures were taken to forcibly stop production at Deir Ammar plant,” on Lebanon’s northern coastline, EDL said yesterday.
EDL’s second power plant in Zahrani, in the south of the country, will be working for the next two days until it runs out of fuel. EDL will then start operations at Deir Ammar again until it uses its reserves of 3,700 cubic meters of fuel. This could take about four days.
The power company said it expected an oil tanker to arrive tomorrow and start unloading at the Zahrani plant on Monday.
Lebanon’s interior ministry has also revised the voter turnout for the elections to 49.6 per cent, up from the initial figure of 41 per cent.
This places voter participation for the parliamentary elections on the same level as in 2018, when almost half of registered voters took part in the ballot.
The Lebanese Forces says that for the first time, it is the largest Christian party in the country’s parliament.
It is not the only one to make that claim. The rival Free Patriotic Movement, a Hezbollah ally, has long been the largest Christian bloc and says it retained the majority.
Although the picture is complex, given the networks of allies and factions running with larger parties, the Lebanese Forces won 22 seats to the Free Patriotic Movement’s 18, down from 29 last year.
It was not the startling upset the Lebanese Forces had hoped for, with only four seats separating its results from those of its main rival.
More broadly, the picture is repeated. Pro-Hezbollah parties scored 59 seats, five short of a majority in the 128-seat cross-confessional parliament.
On the other side are bodies with a broad spectrum of views, from the nationalist Christian Lebanese Forces to the fledgling opposition groups that gained 13 seats.
Despite the numbers appearing to show the Lebanese Forces with a marginal lead among Christian parties – and its party head, Samir Geagea, declaring the victory – Gebran Bassil said the Free Patriotic Movement, which he leads, remained the country’s largest Christian bloc.
He also said, however, that squabbling about winners and losers was a distraction.
“The truth is that today is not the time to flex about who has the majority,” he said.
“It’s time to work hard and get results to fix the country.”
While the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies suffered losses compared with the 2018 elections, the most startling development was the unprecedented 12 seats won by civil society opposition groups.
Experts said that political newcomers could be caught between the two main blocs.
Mr Bassil issued a challenge to the opposition MPs, many of whom had campaigned as the alternative to Lebanon’s entrenched political class, which is largely made up of holdovers from the civil war and has dominated the country’s politics in the 32 years since the conflict ended.
“These new independent – civil society, whatever you call them – this is an opportunity for them to prove themselves. It’s not only about protesting in the streets and talking to the media,” Mr Bassil said.
“There is real legislative and parliamentary action that needs to be taken, so we’ll see how they do.”
In his home town of Batroun, in the country’s north, Free Patriotic Movement party representatives and campaign organisers brushed off the talk of losing their primacy amid reports that the FPM and its allies no longer held the Christian majority.
But Tony Nasr, a campaign organiser, seems unfazed. He denied the loss, confident that once FPM-allied individuals and civil society MPs were tallied, the tables would turn.
“If they mean what they said during the revolution, I’m sure they will be on our side,” he said, an optimistic reference to the uprising that ignited the country on October 17, 2019.
When the first signs of Lebanon’s economic collapse became palpable, so did anger at the country’s political elite.
Resentment at the perceived mismanagement and corruption of Lebanon’s ruling class infamously manifested into comical protest slogans laced with profanities directed at the ruling class. A significant portion of them were aimed at Mr Bassil, who, as the son-inlaw of President Michel Aoun, became the poster boy for nepotism and corruption in the country during the uprising.
Wissam Laham, a constitutional expert and political science professor at St Joseph University of Beirut, said it did not matter which party had won the most Christian seats because they were “all part of the same political regime” responsible for running the country into the ground.
“Even if the FPM lost a few seats, they didn’t lose them to a new political party that opposes the current regime,” he said.
“They lost them to the LF, another radical party from the same political regime.”
Lebanon’s has suffered from an economic collapse the World Bank says is one of the worst in the modern world. The bankrupt nation’s steady disintegration since 2019 has been defined by severe shortages, high inflation and a plummet in the value of the national currency.
Almost 80 per cent of people live in poverty, according to UN figures.
The new parliament will have to appoint a prime minister who would then form a Cabinet – often a months-long endeavour, even with a majority.
When President Aoun’s term expires in October, Mr Lahham and other experts anticipate a possible parliamentary deadlock in the election of a new president.
Lebanon was previously left without a president for twoand-a-half years from 2014 to 2016 until that deadlock was resolved and Mr Aoun was eventually elected.
The Free Patriotic Movement, founded by Mr Aoun, emerged dominant with his appointment.
But with his term ending, a hung parliament, and the FPM’s popularity seemingly waning, it is uncertain whether the appointment of a new president will work in favour of them and their allies.
It’s not only about protesting in the streets … There is real legislative and parliamentary action that needs to be taken
GEBRAN BASSIL Free Patriotic Movement leader