The Daily Star — BEIRUT: Polls opened for Lebanese citizens living abroad in the United States, Canada and Latin America as voting closed in Australia Sunday afternoon, in the second phase of a historic first expat vote. Polling began around midnight Saturday night in Australia, the country with the most Lebanese expats registered in the current election. The ballot boxes in Australia closed at around 3 p.m. Beirut time, or 10 p.m. in Australia. Some 11,826 Lebanese citizens in Australia registered to vote in this year’s parliamentary elections. Canada and the U.S. are home to the second and third highest number of registered Lebanese voters, respectively. Polls also opened Sunday morning in Europe and countries across Africa with significant Lebanese populations, including the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Senegal. The race is the first in which Lebanese expatriates have the right participate from overseas.

As of 5:15 p.m. Beirut time, numbers circulating in local media said that polls closed in Australia with 6,602 voters, with 239 votes counted so far in Canada, 205 in the United States, 102 in Armenia, 775 in the Ivory Coast, 489 in Nigeria, 60 voters in Senegal, no voters in Guinea, 81 in Ghana, 118 in Congo, 72 in South Africa, 50 in Sierra Leone, 81 in Gabon, 84 in Liberia and no votes in Benin. Earlier in the day, expat elections supervisor Bilal Qablan said polling stations were “under a lot of pressure” due to high voter turnout. In Europe, local media reported 1,809 voters cast ballots so far in France, 2,114 in Germany, 628 in Sweden, 371 in the United Kingdom, 322 in Belgium, 203 in Switzerland, 135 in Italy, 74 in Spain, 135 in Romania, 123 in Greece, 76 in Denmark and 72 in the Netherlands. In Latin America, local media reported that in Brazil the number of voters reached 96, none in Venezuela, 19 in Paraguay, 8 in Argentina, none in Mexico and none in Columbia. Local TV channel LBCI reported that voters in Germany encountered several difficulties. One of the most significant issues that voters faced, particularly in Berlin, was not having their names registered to vote at polling stations there. Some citizens reportedly arrived to polling stations in the German capital only to find that their names were registered to vote in another city such as Dusseldorf, which is around a five-hour drive away. Some voters hadn’t been recorded on voting lists at all. Many registered voters in Germany originate from Hezbollah and Amal Movement strongholds in southern Lebanon, with some supporters of the Shiite parties telling local media they suspected the technical difficulties had been orchestrated to lower turnout in these districts. “There are fatal errors in voters’ lists,” Amal Movement MP Ali Bazzi said in a statement carried by the state-run National News Agency. “We received hundreds of complaints from citizens who took the burden [of going to the polling stations] and were surprised that either their names weren’t on the voting lists or that [they were recorded to vote] in different polling stations in different cities,” he said. “It is our right to ask if what happened was a technical error that can be corrected or if it was done on purpose – and this is our fear,” Bazzi was quoted as saying.

 

Some voters in Washington D.C. were also unable to cast their ballots because their names were not present on the voters’ list. Faten Younis, head of political and refugee affairs at the Interior Ministry, told Al-Jadeed news that some expats who were not on the list might have not completed the whole registration process. He assured that the ministry was following up on any complaints they had received. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk arrived Sunday afternoon at the Foreign Ministry in Beirut, to observe the elections taking place around the world by closed-circuit television feeds at overseas polling centers. “This [round of elections] is a pioneering experience,” Machnouk told reporters gathered in an elections monitoring room at the Foreign Ministry. The interior minister detailed a handful of issues he explained were “minor,” including the late shipment of Lebanese passports to voters abroad and registration errors in Germany. Ballot boxes from Latin America would also arrive several days late due to DHL not operating on Labor Day, Machnouk said. But Foreign Ministry Secretary-General Hani Chemaitelly said this could be resolved through permitting Lebanese ambassadors in Latin American countries to accompany the ballot boxes to Lebanon, local media reported. Sunday’s round of voting comes after thousands of Lebanese expats cast their ballots Friday in six Arab countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. “We are impressed by the reaction of the Lebanese people towards the first elections [to include] the diaspora,” the EU’s Election Observation Mission Deputy Chief Observer Jose Antonio de Gabriel said Sunday, according to a Lebanese Foreign Ministry statement. He added that the election process was “going smoothly, and there are no violations or problems that have been observed by our monitors.” EOM observers were monitoring polling stations in 10 different countries Sunday, and would continue to monitor the transfer of ballot boxes to Lebanon once the stations closed, the statement added. The final expat polls will close in the western United States early Monday morning Beirut time. Election Day in Lebanon will take place on May 6.