World looks on as Lebanon gears up for election - 06 Jun 09

For a country as tiny as Lebanon, the importance of the June 7 parliamentary election is disproportionately large. When Lebanese citizens go to the polls on Sunday to elect their representatives to the 128-seat lower house, the international community will be carefully monitoring the outcome.


The US, the EU and France in particular, as well as Muslim-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, all have vested interests in these elections. Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular have invested heavily in the parties they support.

At stake is the tossup between the Western-backed anti-Syrian coalition in power and the opposition backed by Iran and Syria. But in a country as demographically diverse as Lebanon, there is a complex slew of smaller parties with varied alliances and allegiances.

All eyes in these elections are on the opposition led by Hezbollah and Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, who has cast his lot with the Shiite Muslim group. On the other side, the ruling coalition, known as the March 14 Alliance, is led by Saad Hariri, son of slain former premier Rafiq Hariri. The alliance includes Druze, Sunni Muslim and Christian parties, all of which are fiercely anti-Syrian.

Allegations of rampant vote-buying and the unprecedented number of expatriates flying in or being flown in to cast their ballots have combined to make this a potentially explosive poll in a highly volatile region.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Lebanon
• election

[soranB55]

Arabs are like that. Typical arabs are intolerants, violents, killers and brutals. Arabs don't accept others, show no respect for anything human and definitly criminals.

All that is due to Arab*s "Thaqafit bol al-ba3eer" i.e the camel piss culture.

Amazing!! Arabs wipe off themselves and others and yet consider themselves as victims!!!!!! That is my friend arabic piss camel culture. Not only in Lebanon..Look what arabs are doing everywhere.

[SHIAsoldier]

ya khanzeer if u werent afraid of a defeat n if u did not know ur nothing but a liar n american spy in lebanon u wouldnt have to bribe people from all around the world