It was far from business as usual in the second round of Lebanon's municipal elections, Omayma Abdel-Latif reports from Beirut "Urgent: The Free Patriotic Movement calls on its supporters to volunteer and vote for us to make a difference. Five hours remain! Change is a must." This was the short message received by Beirut residents Sunday afternoon urging them to get out and vote. Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal (the Future Movement), the dominant political force in the capital, took a different tactic: convoys patrolled the streets urging supporters to take to the polling stations. Municipal elections are being held for a month on each Sunday covering Lebanon's four governorates. Two rounds are left: on 23 May elections will be held in the south, and a week later in the north. The last minute drive to get supporters to vote was a result of an unexpectedly poor voter turnout in the capital. While the first round of municipal elections in Lebanon, which began 2 May, hardly yielded any surprises, the second round challenged a number of givens that have shaped the political scene in Lebanon for the past five years. Although the electoral campaign of the majority of forces focussed on "development" as the key theme, politics was at the heart of the second round, leading to the revival of tension between 14 March and 8 March forces -- a rivalry that was thought to have been buried under the rubric of national reconciliation. One important outcome is that the second round completed what could be described as "the unfinished business" of parliamentary elections held in June 2009. This was clear in Beirut and Zahle. In Beirut, the battle for 24-member municipal council divided between Muslims and Christians was a foregone conclusion for the Future Movement backed list dubbed, the "Beirut Unity". The Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hizbullah decision to boycott municipal elections in Beirut appears to have deprived the capital of a heated contest. It was, however, the unexpectedly low turnout that left the Future Movement and its Christian allies reeling. The turnout -- according to the best estimate -- reached only around 20 per cent. Despite the calls of Saad Al-Hariri -- Future Movement leader -- to Beirut residents to take part in the elections, because "your vote must be heard," several of Beirut's polling stations were eerily empty. While the Future Movement list won, as expected, the poor voter turnout left many disconcerted. Some observers attributed the low turnout to the fact that there was hardly any contest in the capital. "Hizbullah's boycott of the municipal elections deprived the Future Movement of its weapons of mass destruction which it traditionally invoked during such events -- that being sectarian mobilisation and money," wrote Fedaa Etani in the daily Al-Akhbar. Others explained the low turnout to be an indication of the simmering discontent of Hariri supporters who handed him an easy victory in parliamentary elections but appear unable to digest his recent policy shifts, particularly in terms of relations with Syria. The Beirut battle also revealed dissenting voices among Sunnis. The "Beirutis list" that was the rival list to Hariri built its campaign on seeking to break the Future Movement's monopoly of Sunni representation. A third reason probably had to do with the fact that Hariri honoured a tradition set by his father since the 1998 elections when he divided the 24-seat municipal council between Muslims and Christians although demographically Muslims constitute more than half the population of Beirut. Interior Minister Ziad Baroud had a different explanation: "It was the absence of the proportional representation system that deprived voters of motives for participation in the electoral process," he said Sunday. This statement was anathema to Future Movement MPs, who threatened to "end [Baroud's] political career". Zahle of the Beqaa Valley was another constituency where municipal elections were a mere extension of parliamentary elections. Former minister Elie Skaf, whose list lost the parliamentary elections to the rival 14 March list, has made a strong comeback. His "Zahle Decision" list won 17 out of 19 seats, including the council chairmanship. The election outcome was viewed as a retaliatory response to parliamentary election defeat. In many of the western Beqaa Valley villages, which once blindly supported Hariri, victory was achieved Sunni figures in opposition to Hariri during the past five years -- another clear indication simmering dissent amongst the Sunni constituency. Villages such as Jeb-Jenin, Gaza, Qaroun, and Majdl Anjar -- once the hotbed of Hariri supporters -- went to rivals of the Future Movement, or as the media commonly describes it, "the Sunni opposition". Hizbullah also faced surprising results when in north Beqaa, in Al-Labwa, the list supported by the village's families defeated the one supported by Hizbullah and the Amal Movement. In another village, the Hizbullah-Amal list suffered a defeat at the hands of a list backed by the Communist Party. Since families constitute an important deciding force in municipal elections, any agreement that excludes or marginalises them often than not ends in failure. Hizbullah and Amal should surely learn a lesson from the Beqaa elections to avoid a repetition in elections in the south. Already some voices of dissent in southern villages are beginning to surface against the ways in which big party lists are being formed. Meanwhile, in a number of councils, there will be independent lists running against Hizbullah-Amal backed lists. Just as in Beirut, the real battle will be over voter turnout. As Lebanese political forces weigh their losses and gains, the head of the FPM, Michel Aoun, appears to stand somewhere in the middle. Aoun, whose movement participates in municipal elections for the first time, made some gains but also suffered defeat at the hands of his rivals. He lost in Christian-dominated areas such as Jbeil, Hazmiya and Sin Al-Feel, but also won the majority of seats in Al-Hadath, Bhamdoun, and managed to make breakthroughs in villages in the western Beqaa. One point of weakness is that while Aoun made alliances with his political rivals, including Al-Kataeb (the Phalange) and the Lebanese Forces, in a number of villages, he ran against them in other constituencies. This was hard to sell to his supporters. "In one village, the FPM cooperated with the corrupt, while in another village they were running on the ticket of fighting corruption. People did not know which Aoun to believe," said one commentator.
