Lebanese look for way out as they go to the polls
About 3.7 million registered voters went to the polls on Sunday to decide the fate of Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament, looking for social and economic problems, poverty in particular, to be tackled.
President Michel Aoun told a visiting delegation from the International Organization of La Francophonie earlier that the elections would be held in a “transparent and free atmosphere”, his office said.
Maroun Khater, associate professor in the finance department at Beirut’s Saint Joseph University, said that despite all the challenges, the parliamentary elections are “a democratic event that marks Lebanon’s identity” and are a “solid base for change”.
The elections are the first since protests broke out in October 2019 over the government’s failure to effectively tackle corruption, economic problems and the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion. The blast, caused by a warehouse fire, killed about 200 people and left 300,000 homeless.
The new parliament, Khater said, will be responsible for forming a new government immediately and for electing a new president in October, adding that respecting the scheduled timeline of the two events “leads to political stability” — an “essential determinant of any new start”.
The elections coincide with “imminent political and economic challenges” that make them crucial, Khater said.
Lebanon has long been blighted by political instability. For a time it went without a government after the resignation of caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab in August 2020 — only to be taken over by caretaker premier Saad Hariri, who quit in July last year. In September President Aoun announced that the businessman-turned-politician Najib Mikati would be the prime minister.
The new set of elected Lebanese leaders will face the herculean task of lifting 74 percent of about 4 million people out of poverty and lifting the country’s currency, which has lost 90 percent of its value since 2019.
On Wednesday, Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, called Lebanon a “failing state” for estimates that put four in every five people in poverty.
More participation expected
Pierre El Haddad, founder and former chairman of the Network of Organizational Development of Experts, a public policy advisory group in Lebanon, said he hopes to see more participation from women and youth. “We just need the people to be liberated from the weight of the government,” El Haddad said.
Khater said: “Economically, the new parliament is supposed to have its efforts synchronized with the new cabinet in order to vote a complete recovery plan for Lebanon and to assure the legislative support needed. What awaits Lebanon in the postelections stage is closely linked to what Lebanese are expecting from the parliament.”
Nagapushpa Devendra, a research scholar at the University of Erfurt in Germany, said that for the first time in many years Lebanese people “have alternative candidates” in the elections.
“The nationals as well as the expatriates have been galvanized by the cascade of crisis and are supporting independent candidates who are
not associated with any sectarian and political elites, hoping for constructive reforms.
Lebanon has a sectarian system in which the president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shiite.
There are 718 candidates across
103 lists in 15 districts and 27 subdistricts this time, compared with 597 candidates and 77 lists in 2018.
The European Union had deployed 170 observers all over the country to monitor procedures on election day, Al Jazeera reported.