By Heba Nasser in Sour, Lebanon — middleeasteye.net — The electoral aesthetic across south Lebanon is a glaring display of the deep-rooted dominance of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. All along highways and side roads, the serene faces of Shia leaders and their candidates look on from posters as people drive deeper southward. “Your trust is our responsibility,” proclaims one slogan perched high at the entrance of Abbasiyeh, a town a handful of kilometres away from Lebanon’s southern coast. There’s no question that the Shia heavyweight parties are predicted to win the majority of votes in south Lebanon on Sunday. But a lot has changed in the four years since Lebanon’s last elections: a popular uprising and catastrophic economic collapse, to name a few. That upheaval has led to rumblings of dissatisfaction across Hezbollah and Amal’s stronghold, and the parties themselves have taken notice.
Despite their assured electoral hold, for weeks now the parties have been contacting southern constituents – even those most loyal to them – to ensure that they will be voting on Sunday, in a push never seen previously. But like all parties that make up the oligarchy that has run Lebanon into the ground, they are increasingly associated with the country’s breakdown, and many in the south have started expressing disenchantment with the factions they have traditionally supported and repeatedly voted for. How that dissatisfaction is expressed is another matter. Lebanese voters have a habit of calling for change only to vote for their traditional parties when at the polling booth. Yet many southerners told Middle East Eye that faced with today’s corruption, stasis, and economic meltdown, they plan to boycott or cast blank ballots.
