By Nada Homsi — .thenationalnews.com — The Lebanese Forces say it is the largest Christian party in parliament for the first time — but they are not the only ones to make the claim. Their rivals, the Hezbollah-allied Free Patriotic Movement, have long been the largest Christian bloc and say they retained the majority. The competing claims appear to set the battle lines ahead of the presidential election in October when MPs have the often contentious vote for Lebanon’s highest-ranking Christian official. Although alliances will likely shift and settle once the new parliament convenes and begins its work, the electoral results show a lead for the Lebanese Forces, who scored 22 seats to the Free Patriotic Movement’s 18. Ultimately, it was not the startling upset the Lebanese Forces had hoped for and with only four seats separating the two parties.

More broadly, the picture is repeated. The pro-Hezbollah parties, including Free Patriotic Movement, scored 59 seats — five short of a majority in the 128 seat cross-confessional parliament. While the pro-Hezbollah faction is a generally cohesive alliance, the groups that now make up the majority of seats are an array of parties like the Lebanese Forces, smaller factions, independents and the emerging opposition groups who gained 13 seats who have no such consensus of views.

Bassil claims Free Patriotic Movement still top

Despite the numbers appearing to show the Lebanese Forces’ marginal lead among Christian parties — and its party head Samir Geagea declaring the victory — Free Patriotic Movement head Gebran Bassil also said they had remained the largest Christian bloc. However, he said there were more important things to work on than squabbling about winners and losers. “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, of which the Free Patriotic Movement is a major partner, suffered losses compared to the 2018 elections, the most startling development was the unprecedented 12 seats won by civil society opposition groups.

Lebanon election results 2022 in full: which candidates and parties won?

by business-standard.com — A new $10 million grant will help Lebanon mitigate the environmental and health impacts of the Beirut port explosions on the neighbouring population and support Beirut’s reconstruction, the UN said in a statement. The grant given through the Beirut Critical Environment Recovery, Restoration and Waste Management Program, was agreed on Wednesday between […]

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday issued new Hezbollah-related sanctions, designating Lebanese businessman and the Iran-backed group’s financial facilitator, Ahmad Jalal Reda Abdallah, and his companies. Abdallah, five of his associates and eight of his companies in Lebanon and Iraq were sanctioned and added to the sanctions list of the U.S. Treasury […]

@AzziSejean

رَبِـحْتم، ربِّـحوا البلد. خَسِرتُم، لا تُـخَسِّروا البلد. عظمةُ الديمقراطيّةِ أنّها تساوي في المسؤوليّةِ الرابِـحين والخاسِرين. للأوّلين تَقول الديمقراطيّةُ: “كونوا متواضِعين في انتصارِكم وحُكْمِكم”، وللآخرين: “كونوا نبلاءَ في خَسارتِكم ومعارضَتِكم”. لحظةُ الانتصارِ أربعٌ وعشرون ساعةً تتبدّدُ بعد النشوة، ولحظةُ المسؤوليّةِ أربعُ سنواتٍ تبقى للمحاسَبةِ أربعينَ سنة. لا تَبحثوا عن الأكثريّةِ الفعليّةِ في المجلسِ النيابي، فهي موجودةٌ في مكانٍ آخَر، في الّذين قاطَعوا الانتخابات.

الفائزون والخاسرون في انتخاباتِ 15 أيار يُمثّلون معًا نحو 41% فقط من الشعب، بينما المقاطعون يُمثّلون وَحدَهم نحو 59%. لكنَّ دورَ المجلسِ النيابيِّ الجديدِ ــــ وهو كاملُ الشرعيّة ــــ أن يُجسِّدَ صوتَ المقترِعين وصوتَ المقاطِعين لأنَّ المقاطعةَ هي صوتٌ مُمتَنعٌ. المقترِعون والمقاطِعون يَنتمون إلى الاتّجاهاتِ السياسيّةِ ذاتِها. طرفٌ فَضَّلَ التعبيرَ عن موقفِه اقتراعًا وآخَرُ ارْتأى التعبيرَ عنه امتناعًا. ليس هذا الواقعُ سِمةَ الحياةِ السياسيّةِ اللبنانيّةِ وحدها، فهو يَنتشرُ في غالِبيّةِ الديمقراطيّاتِ الذابِلةِ حيث الشعوبُ لا تأمَلُ جديدًا من أنظمتِها.

MP Farid Haykal el Khazen stressed after his visit to his Eminence the Cardinal Maronite Partriarch Bechara el Rai the national constants related to Lebanon’s unity, as well as the project and proposals of Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai related to reforms and defense strategy, which are aimed at confining arms to the Lebanese army and […]

Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) Tamara Qiblawi — Iran-backed Hezbollah lost its parliamentary edge in a high-stakes election last weekend. For Lebanon, this could mean everything, or nothing at all. The country’s new parliament remains largely split between pro-Iran and pro-Saudi blocs. Hezbollah still commands the largest single parliamentary bloc and the new political makeup signals that the country is headed, yet again, for a costly stalemate. Yet within those apparently immutable divisions, important political shifts have taken place. Reformists from outside Lebanon’s traditional political establishment won around 10% of the seats. The reformists dislodged, if marginally, the dominance of an old political elite. This worked against Lebanon’s most powerful political party. When Hezbollah’s bloc lost a majority that underpinned the last four years of Lebanese politics, it was an unusual setback.

The group had gotten used to victory over the years. In 2000, it drove Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation. In 2006, it held its ground in a war against Israel when Israel sought to disarm the group. During Syria’s civil war, it successfully intervened on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and helped bolster his defenses after the dictator violently quashed a popular uprising against his rule. The group’s political influence appeared to be on a relentless rise, despite a domestic bid — backed by Saudi Arabia — to curb the group’s power that was rapidly extending beyond Lebanon. But the weekend’s election marked a reversal of fortunes. While the parliamentary makeup of Hezbollah and its Shia ally, Amal, remains intact, a number of the group’s allies were unseated or beaten, mostly by reformists.

Analysts said this pointed to a loss in the group’s once formidable mobilization power. This could be a sign of growing frustration among Hezbollah’s constituents with the way it has handled a devastating economic crisis — and its increasingly heavy-handed intimidation tactics against dissent, including its attempts to stifle an investigation into Beirut’s 2020 port blast. It is unclear how Hezbollah will respond to these losses, or how the country’s new parliament will chart its course forward amid a financial tailspin. Those in parliament who oppose Hezbollah are an inchoate cluster of parties and independent candidates, with the Saudi-allied right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) representing the largest parliamentary bloc among them. The LF is a civil war-era militia-turned-political party, a far cry from the change that the masses called for when nationwide demonstrations engulfed the country in October 2019.

By AJ Naddaff — middleeasteye.net — Lebanon’s first elections since the country was devastated by its worst-ever economic crisis have unseated household names in Lebanese politics, shifted majority blocs, and yielded a surprising breakthrough for independents. Middle East Eye takes a look at some of the elections’ most notable winners and losers.

Hezbollah-Amal’s prominent allies

While Hezbollah and their Amal Movement ally retained their dominance of Shia representation in parliament, some of their longtime Christian, Sunni and Druze allies lost their seats. The most prominent among the Hezbollah-allied unseated MPs is Talal Arslan. The Druze politician, hailing from one of Lebanon’s oldest political dynasties, was first elected in 1992. The prince of Druze Feudalism, known as the emir in Arabic, lost his seat in the Mount Lebanon IV constituency to Mark Daou, a newcomer campaigning on a reform agenda. Elie Ferzli, the longtime Greek Orthodox deputy speaker of parliament, is also a veteran MP who was defeated in the Bekaa II constituency. He lost to one of the more controversial opposition-backed candidates: Yassin Yassin. Scepticism surrounds Yassin, a millionaire who purchased some of former prime minister Saad Hariri’s old businesses yet presents himself as anti-establishment. In the north, Syria-aligned Faisal Karami, the heir of an influential political family in northern Tripoli, failed to get re-elected for a second term in parliament, although his list still won three seats. Karami’s father, Omar, served two terms as premier when Faisal was young.

New Christian majority on the block

By Ben Hubbard — NewYork times — nytimes — BEIRUT, Lebanon — Voters in Lebanon deprived the Hezbollah militant group and its political allies of a parliamentary majority while electing about a dozen new, independent candidates, according to official results released on Tuesday. The election, on Sunday, was the first opportunity for voters to formally […]

by news.middleeast-24.com — The former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Schenker, confirmed that “the Free Patriotic Movement went through a very difficult time in the elections, and the United States held it responsible for its actions, which it considered corrupt.” In an interview with LBCI, Schenker said: “The head of […]

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies are likely to lose their majority in Lebanon’s parliament, three sources allied to the group said on Monday, in a major blow to the heavily armed faction that reflected widespread anger at ruling parties. Sunday’s election – the first since Lebanon’s financial collapse and the Beirut port blast of 2020 – also produced wins for the Saudi-aligned Lebanese Forces (LF), a Christian party, and reform-minded candidates across sects. Their breakthroughs, however, could fracture parliament into several camps and polarise it more sharply between Hezbollah’s allies and opponents. Those opponents are not currently united into a single bloc. The deadlock could derail reforms required to unlock support from the International Monetary Fund to ease Lebanon’s economic crisis and delay parliamentary decisions on a speaker, a premier to form a Cabinet, and a new president later this year.

Preliminary results indicate a reversal of Lebanon’s last election in 2018, when Hezbollah and its allies won 71 of parliament’s 128 seats, pulling Lebanon deeper into the orbit of Shi’ite-led Iran and away from Sunni-led Saudi Arabia. Sunday’s result could open the door for Riyadh to exercise greater sway in Beirut, long an arena of its rivalry with Tehran. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, but Iran on Monday said it respected the vote and had never intervened in Lebanon’s internal affairs. The United States, which has imposed sanctions on Hezbollah, welcomed the elections and encouraged politicians to recommit to economic reforms.

‘NATIONAL CELEBRATION’