Elecciones parlamentarias en El Líbano

Se votó hoy en El Líbano en elecciones parlamentarias después de nueve años, con una concurrencia cercana al 50%. Los resultados se conocerán recién mañana o el martes. Se prevé un repunte de los candidatos de Hezbolá. Veremos. Las dos primeras notas de este post son del sitio web libanés Al Manar:

Título: Líbano cerró unas elecciones tranquilas con una participación del 49,2 por ciento

Texto: El Ministerio del Interior libanés ha indicado que la participación en las elecciones libanesas ha sido del 49,2 por ciento, indicó la agencia oficial libanesa NNA.

Los colegios en el país han cerrado y se está procediendo en la actualidad al recuento de votos.

Anteriormente, el presidente de la República, el general Michel Aoun, enfatizó que “los libaneses actualmente están ejerciendo la práctica política nacional más importante para elegir a sus representantes para los próximos cuatro años”, y subrayó que “nadie debería incumplir un deber tan sagrado”.

“Aquellos que no ejercen su derecho al voto no tendrán derecho a pedir responsabilidades”, sostuvo, señalando que la Cámara de Representantes es la madre de todas las instituciones del país, por lo que la participación en las elecciones es primordial para todos.

“La elección es un deber sagrado para los ciudadanos”, dijo Aoun en su discurso.

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Título: Primeros datos del recuento señalan una victoria abrumadora de Hezbolá y Amal en los distritos del Sur

Texto: Los candidatos de Hezbolá y Amal han obtenido todos los escaños en los dos distritos del Sur de Líbano durante las elecciones parlamentarias generales del domingo, indican los primeros recuentos de votos.

La máquina electoral de las listas electorales de Hezbolá y Amal, oficialmente llamadas listas de “Esperanza y Lealtad”, anunció una amplia victoria en los distritos 2 y 3 del Sur, según las estadísticas preliminares.

Las listas de “Esperanza y Lealtad” obtuvieron los 18 escaños en liza en los dos distritos, dijo el domingo la máquina electoral de los dos aliados.

Tras anunciarse los resultados, las celebraciones comenzaron en las ciudades del sur entre los seguidores de Hezbolá y Amal.

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La nota que sigue es de la agencia Associated Press (AP):

Título: Lebanon votes in shadow of Syria war, reflecting divisions

Texto:  Voting Sunday for the first time in her life, the young Shiite Muslim woman said she was casting her ballot for the Shiite militant Hezbollah group. One of her relatives was killed while fighting Sunni militants near the border with Syria and she wanted to honor that sacrifice with her vote.

“Had it not been for the resistance we wouldn’t be here,” said Zahraa Harb, 24, as she and her husband entered a polling station in the southern Beirut suburb of Burj al-Barajneh. “The arms of the resistance protected Lebanon. Had it not been for the resistance all of Lebanon would have fallen into the hands of the terrorists.”

Sunday’s parliamentary election was the first in nine years — and the first since the catastrophic civil war in Syria broke out seven years ago. The conflict has nearly torn apart this tiny Arab nation with bouts of spillover violence and sent more than a million Syrian refugees — a quarter of Lebanon’s population — pouring across the border.

The war next door has divided Lebanese, with some supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad and others sympathizing with the rebels trying to bring him down. In May 2013, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah began openly sending its fighters to back Assad and since then has taken part in almost every major battle in the country. Hundreds of its fighters have been killed and wounded while fighting in Syria, an intervention that Hezbollah says was necessary to protect Lebanon from the Sunni militants that proliferated across the border in the chaos of Syria’s civil war.

The divisions and open hostility were on display Sunday among Hezbollah supporters and opponents of the Shiite militants. As polls closed, fist fights broke out in the Beirut district of Tareeq Jdideh, a bastion of support for Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s Western-backed Sunni prime minister, with both sides throwing stones at each other as security forces rushed to contain the violence.

Hariri, who heads a national unity government that includes members of Hezbollah, is widely expected to return as prime minister and recreate that coalition following Sunday’s election. But that political alliance, seen as necessary to keep the peace, is not often translated into harmony on the street.

For Harb and her husband, Ashraf Harake, casting their ballots for Hezbollah came down to a matter of survival.

She recalled how her parents’ home shook when twin suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group targeted their hometown of Burj al-Barajneh on Nov. 12, 2015, killing 43 people in the deadliest attack by extremists in Lebanon since the war in Syria broke out. Harake, who was her fiance back then, rushed from the house to help dozens of people wounded in the streets.

“The Burj al-Barajneh blasts made us more determined,” said Harb, her face framed by a black traditional Islamic head scarf. Her husband’s cousin, Ali Harake, had been killed a year earlier when IS militants sent explosives-rigged vehicles into Hezbollah strongholds in the Qalamoun mountains on Lebanon’s border with Syria.

“I will raise my children on the ideology of the resistance,” said Harb, who is six months pregnant with her first child, and sees Hezbollah as a group that once fought to liberate Lebanon from Israeli occupation and now protects the country from Syria-based militant groups.

For 60-year-old Sami Kara, who is a strong supporter of Hariri, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s involvement in the war in Syria is to blame for the militant attacks in Lebanon.

“Hezbollah attracted explosions to this country. Had we kept our distance from (regional) conflicts we wouldn’t have reached this point,” said the clothes merchant, standing near a tent decorated with the blue flags of Hariri’s Future Movement in Beirut’s Sunni stronghold of Tareeq Jdideh.

He said Hariri will always stand against Hezbollah and prevent the Shiite militants from dominating Beirut, adding that his city will not become the fourth Arab capital dominated by Iran — a reference to Iran’s influence in Syria’s Damascus, Yemen’s Sanaa and Baghdad.

Wissam Shqifi, 44, another Hezbollah critic, said the group’s intervention in Syria “is an aggression on another country. Hezbollah is ruining our relations with regional countries” — a reference to Hezbollah’s military intervention in Yemen, Iraq and Syria that has led several oil-rich Gulf states to join the United States in naming it as a terrorist organization.

Casting his ballot in the capital on Sunday, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, countered the charges that Hezbollah was trying to turn Lebanon into a state controlled by Iran. Beirut, he said, “is an Arab city and is not Persian.”

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Esta es de la agencia iraní PressTV:

Título: Interior minister: General election turnout 49.2 percent

Texto: Lebanon's Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk says provisional voter turnout figure of the country's parliamentary elections was 49.2 percent.

"This is a new law and voters were not familiar with it, nor were the heads of polling stations," said Machnouk in a news conference on Sunday.

"Voting operations were very slow," he added.

The latest's figures marked a drop from the 54 percent of voters who took part in the country's last parliamentary elections which was held in 2009.

Machnouk also went on to call on supporters of political parties to avoid celebratory gunfire for the fear of possible casualties.

Earlier in the day, voting begun in Lebanon's first parliamentary election in nine years, with over 500 candidates vying for 128 seats.

Lebanese vote in first elections in nine years

Voting has begun in Lebanon's parliamentary elections in almost a decade, with over 500 candidates vying for 128 seats at the legislature.

Official results are not expected until Monday or Tuesday.

The 128 parliamentary seats are split evenly - 64 for Christians and 64 for Muslims including Druze, with the two halves further divided among 11 religious groups.

Each of the 15 electoral districts has parliamentary seats apportioned according to its demographic make-up.

Lebanon's parliamentary elections were delayed three times since 2009 due to the crisis in neighboring Syria as well as disagreement over the country's new electoral law.

The current Lebanese parliament contains more than 20 different political parties. Its biggest party is the Future Movement, led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The next parties are President Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s Amal Movement and the Hezbollah resistance movement.

An anti-Hezbollah alliance led by Hariri and supported by Saudi Arabia won a majority in the Lebanese parliament in 2009, but it has since disintegrated.

Hariri stunned Lebanon and the world in November 2017 by announcing his resignation in a live television broadcast from Saudi Arabia. He accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world, an allegation rejected by both sides.

A recent document pointed to Saudi Arabia’s "plot" to assert enormous influence on Lebanon's elections.

PressTV-Saudi plot to manipulate Lebanon polls exposed

A recent document has disclosed the Saudi regime’s plot to engineer Lebanon’s forthcoming parliamentary elections.

Analysts expect more than half the seats of the new Lebanese parliament to be won by Hezbollah and its allies. The resistance movement has played a critical role in the Syrian military’s counter-terrorism operations over the past few years.