The second round of Lebanese elections was a vote against disarming Hizbullah, Omayma Abdel-Latif reports from south Lebanon For 75-year-old Sarreya Baydoun, a resident of Bint Jbeil in south Lebanon, the elections held on Sunday were a vote against Resolution 1559 and the Israeli- American schemes for Lebanon. "This election," she explained, "is not about how many seats Hizbullah will have in the parliament, it is about where we Lebanese stand regarding the resistance and the American designs for Lebanon. It was a vote for or against the resistance," Baydoun said. Baydoun's sentiments were shared by many voters in the southern part of the country who went to the polls on Sunday in the second round of the Lebanese elections, which began last week. The latest round of elections were overshadowed by increasing political tension in the country following the assassination of writer and journalist Samir Kassir. Despite the tension, the electoral contest went quietly and smoothly in the two southern constituencies of Sidon and Nabatiya. In a break with Lebanese electoral tradition, the main feature which emerged from Sunday's poll was the remarkably high turnout. In the first constituency of Sidon, Zahrani, Tyre and Bint Jbeil, 45 per cent of registered voters turned out at voting stations whereas 42 per cent of voters turned out in the second constituency of Nabatiya, Jzeen, Hasbyia and Marjayoun. One of the alarming signs which emerged from the second round, however, was what was viewed as a continuation of the Christian boycott of the elections. Reports of an unprecedented low turnout were recorded in a number of Christian-dominated areas including Jzeen. "People feel isolated and marginalised when they know they don't even have the right to elect the representatives they see fit for the job. With or without us they will be deputies," a Jzeen resident told Al-Ahram Weekly. The turnout in Jzeen was not clear but was estimated at seven per cent. In the first round in Beirut, a very low turnout was also recorded in Christian areas, a sign which many believe reflected the simmering discontent among Lebanon's Christians with the whole electoral process. The current electoral law, known as the 2000 law, allows for a Christian deputy to be elected with 18,500 votes, whereas a Muslim deputy needs to garner 25,000 votes. for a seat in parliament. The Lebanese parliament consists of 128 seats divided equally between Lebanon's Muslim and Christian population, according to the Taif Accord signed in 1990 which put an end to the Lebanese civil war. Many feared that a Beirut scenario where voters showed up in relatively low numbers would repeat itself in the southern parts of the country. But Hizbullah's efforts to mobilise voters to go to the polls seemed to have borne fruit. In Bint Jbeil, a predominantly Shia village on the borders with Palestine, cars were patrolling the streets with flags of both the Amal and Hizbullah movements, reflecting the alliance the parties had established weeks before which resulted in a unified list they called the "Development, Liberation and Resistance" list. During the past week, party cadres provided southern voters living in different regions of Lebanon with free transportation to the south for the elections. The party's electoral machine has been on full alert to ensure that some of the practices committed by Shia voters in Beirut will not be repeated in the south. Last week, Hizbullah's alliance with Tayar Al-Mustaqbal, Saad Al-Hariri's political bloc, was rocked by leaked reports that some Shia voters in Beirut did not adhere to the party line by voting for the Al-Hariri-Junblatt-Hizbullah list. Instead, some voters, dissatisfied with the party's alliance with members of the opposition, voted for the independent, Nasserist leaning candidate Najah Wakim, against Atef Majdalani of the Al-Hariri bloc. Also, Ghenoua Jaloul, another deputy from Al-Hariri's bloc, accused Shia voters of crossing her name off of the voting list. Despite Hizbullah's attempts to downplay the incidents, party sources told the Weekly that such practices angered Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbullah, who in a meeting with the party's electoral committee pressed them to work hard to prevent such practices from being repeated in the remaining two rounds. Party cadres make no secret that the endgame of their electoral alliance with members of the Lebanese opposition was to provide the resistance movement with the political backing and national consensus it desperately needs to face up to US pressures for Hizbullah to disarm. It was, therefore, fitting that slogans printed on the party's banners spread across the southern parts of the country, and in Al-Dahyia, Hizbullah's headquarters in Beirut, proclaimed "a resistance that defends a homeland and a homeland which safeguards the resistance." For Hizbullah, if the electoral round in Beirut was held in remembrance of former prime minister Rafiq Al-Hariri, murdered in a car bomb last February, the one in the south was held under the banner of safeguarding the resistance. "The key motivation behind Hizbullah's alliances," explained Mohamed Fneish, a newly elected Hizbullah deputy, "is to ensure that the elected parliament will not put a gloss of legitimacy on any pro- Israeli designs particularly with regards to the resistance's armament," he told the Weekly. Hizbullah's alliance with Amal came under fire particularly from opposition circles which argued that such an alliance left no room for a multiplicity of choices for southern voters and would bring back the same faces to parliament. Anwar Yassin, a member of the Lebanese Communist Party, spent 17 years in Israeli prisons and was released a year ago. Running as an independent in Bint Jbeil, he criticised the banner under which the Hizbullah-Amal alliance has been promoting its list. "It is an attitude of either you are with the resistance if you vote for the Hizbullah-Amal list, or you are against it if you don't. But this is political blackmail because there is not a shadow of doubt that all Lebanese are with the resistance, we just need some new blood to be able to handle the hard times ahead of us," Yassin told a press conference on Saturday. Although Yassin failed to get a seat, he, nonetheless, received 18,981 votes. The only electoral list which ran against the Hizbullah-Amal alliance was the Change and Liberation ( Al-Taghyeer wa Al- Tahrir) list. In response, Hizbullah officials argued that it is precisely because hard times are ahead for Lebanon that the priority should be to create alliances that will reinforce unity rather than division. Although many described the alliance as no more than "an electoral necessity" between the two key powers dominating Lebanon's Shia community, Na'im Qassim, Hizbullah's deputy secretary- general, said soon after the election results were declared that the alliance "was not temporary but rather strategic, to safeguard the achievements of the resistance". Both Hizbullah and Amal sources insisted that the alliance was not directed against any political force but was rather a message to the outside world that when it comes to the issue of the resistance, Lebanon remains united and the alliance is capable of providing it with the political and popular backing it needs. Coincidentally, the elections in south Lebanon took place as Lebanon commemorates the 23rd anniversary of the Israeli invasion of the country in June 1982, an occasion on which, according to experts and commentators, the nation should pause and reflect as it enters yet another uncertain period. "We have to pause for a while and contemplate the occasion when Israel invaded Beirut from the south," Talal Salman, publisher of the As-Safir newspaper wrote on Monday. "We have to remember Resolution 1559 and realise that the elections in the south were not about candidates or seats, they were about one issue: how can the resistance in Lebanon be saved from the schemes being hatched for it in Beirut at the orders of foreign capitals?" Salman added.
