 Elections were held in Lebanon on May 15 to elect a new parliament. These elections took place at a crucial time. The country is facing a catastrophic economic crisis and the credibility of its political institutions is very low. The election results saw the Hezbollah-led bloc emerging as the leading player although it fell short of a majority. What are the major trends that emerged from the elections and how do we understand the political situation in its aftermath? Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News explains. So in the Lebanese elections in many ways all sides won and so all sides can claim a victory. Of course the mainstream media was pushing this idea that it was a huge defeat for Hezbollah. That's not actually true. Hezbollah managed to maintain its support among Shias or actually even increase it and produce a huge turnout from their areas. The Lebanese forces, the sort of fascistic militia party that was one of the most violent actors during the Lebanese Civil War and is heavily backed by the Saudis now has been heavily backed in the past by the Americans and in some cases the Israelis. They did manage to get more seats than before but I mean it wasn't that much of a difference. The free patriotic movement, the FPM, not only managed to preserve itself despite like a year's long campaign against them by the international community meaning like the West and the Gulf states in an attempt to break their alliance between Hezbollah and its Christian ally. But for the first time Jebron Basile the head of the party actually ran alone. Back in 2018 he ran with Michel Aoun who's the current president of Lebanon but he clearly has inherited the party from Michel Aoun and he did very well despite the campaign I mentioned. So unlike some other figures who won't be able to you know Michel Aoun actually showed that he could leave this party as kind of a legacy to his son-in-law Jebron Basile's son-in-law. The ML party is guaranteed you know of course to be the speaker or have the speaker of parliament and to be busy because the speaker always goes to the oldest member of the parliament who's a Shia until they elect a new one and then of course there's the civil society sort of like you know opposition parties that rode in on the 2019 uprising they can also claim a victory because this time they actually won a few seats. So everyone can claim a victory you know in many ways except the Lebanese people because nothing at the end of the day has really changed and those claiming to be the change are actually not that different than the elites that they want to replace. And just to get a little bit more specific I mean from the point of view of the resistance because this of course like I mentioned has been the biggest overall narrative promoted by the mainstream media is that you know his Bala loss but actually from the point of view of the resistance the election results were very good like even though government formation and choosing the president and the speaker are going to be very difficult because no one really has a clear majority unless the Saudis tell like the head of the Lebanese forces to compromise. Other than that you know the Shias they voted you know for all the his Bala and ML members of parliament it was clear support for the resistance you know his Bala had originally expected Shia turnout might be lower because of people's frustrations by the situation in the country but Nisrallah gave these three speeches you know heading into the elections that really mobilized people and led to an increased turnout and also you know his Bala's enemies helped by saying things like they were going to break Nisrallah's neck and you know break his finger and just like other things that riled up his face and so Shia votes actually increased this election by I think it was 22,000 from 2018 to now and this actually doesn't include the 9,000 votes that were cancelled the 9,000 Shia votes that were cancelled in the Baka and in the south because people like made mistakes in how they filled out the ballots like you know circling names and making a check outside the box or in some cases like making a heart in the box which is kind of funny but the point is that it's really silly to call it a defeat for his Bala when they actually gained tens of thousands of more votes and you know in the past his Bala faced clear distinct adversaries like the future movement and the Lebanese forces and this time they only had one enemy which was the Lebanese forces you know one thing interesting thing about this election is the sort of Sunni representation was divided among different individuals so there was no real Sunni current facing his Bala this time and that is because interestingly enough Saad Haridi the head of the future party the son of the Saudi back to the field Haridi the former minister of prime minister of Lebanon who himself was once Saudi Arabia's man in Lebanon he was back in 2017 people might remember Saad Haridi was kidnapped and beaten and humiliated by Mohammed bin Salman and forced to publicly resign and so this time around you know Saad Haridi seemed to kind of defy his Saudi masters for the first time and called on Sunnis in Lebanon not to vote and this actually forced the Saudi ambassador in Lebanon to like run around the country essentially trying to pay people to vote including to pay Sunni Muslims to vote for the Christian Lebanese forces candidates so this was in a way like kind of Saad Haridi's revenge against his torture so his Bala also gained members of parliament in unexpected areas they have a Sunni and Bala that's now with them and now she has have you know a representative in Jval which is you know a very Christian area so you know from the Shia point of view if it was a referendum then the you know American Saudi project was shown to be a massive failure despite attempts to find Shia alternatives and Lebanese forces giving money to people and USAID money being channeled to various people I mean I'm talking about tens of millions of dollars if not more to try to defeat his Bala you know the free patriotic movement everyone's he was expecting them to like not have any uh uh seats in parliament this time around but they you know they had 24 prior to the selection now they have 22 so in a four-year international campaign against this party to try to break their alliance with his Bala they just lost two seats so despite sanctions and accusations and insults you know this party still exists it still stands pretty strong so you know all in all this was if anything this proved that despite this international campaign to destroy the resistance in Lebanon it didn't work electorally despite all the gerrymandering which makes you know certain votes have more weight than certain votes in certain areas that tend to be pro-west pro-Saudi pro-LF despite them having everything on their side the money the votes they still were not able to win a majority in the country the elections were held even as successive governments have failed to address the economic and social crisis in the country these crises have been worsened by the Beirut blasts and the COVID-19 pandemic however these elections may not be followed by the immediate formation of a government what are the chances of a government being formed quickly and what kind of configurations might lead to it so in the prior government the pro his Bala coalition the resistance coalition had I think something like 68 seats so they had a clear majority in parliament and even with that clear majority they they were still unable to do anything to really address the economic crisis now that block has 60 MPs 60 members of parliament who are like 100 with the resistance which isn't a clear majority so they have a plurality but not a clear majority so they'll be less likely to be able to address the issues in fact this parliament is going to be split between the sort of pro his Bala side the anti his Bala side and then certain parties and so-called independent independence who you know will move from one side to the other depending on what the issue is so it's going to be very difficult to get anything done in this parliament but that said the parliament in Lebanon has been pretty paralyzed for years now they've been unable to really do much to address the country's problems because the country's problems aren't just about elections it's not just about who's represented in parliament it's about the overall structure of Lebanon the economic structure of Lebanon until and not just the economic structure of Lebanon it's about the region you know Lebanon cannot be separated from the region there are sanctions on Lebanon's neighbor Syria that hurt Lebanon on top of the sanctions that exist against Lebanon you know the fact that Lebanon's neighbor to the south is a settler colonial state Israel that continues to be a major aggressor is also a problem for Lebanon and that's actually blocking Lebanon from accessing its own oil fields in the sea is also a huge detriment to Lebanon's ability to deal with this economic crisis and at the end of the day it still has this very this very intense like oligarchic structure of wealthy people that run the banks that run the country's economy and their answer to everything is to privatize and take IMF loans which is not going to save Lebanon so at the end of the day until those broader structural issues of the way the economy functions before you know without taking on you know capitalism the oligarch the entrenched oligarchy and the broader structure of imperialism that is actually behind these you know these smaller structures in the country Lebanon's not going to be able to make its way out of this crisis so at the end of the day this new parliament you know I hate to say it doesn't mean anything but it's unlikely to do anything to save the country from hitting rock bottom Lebanon is a country where players like the Gulf monarchy have for long played a crucial role the US has also seen it as crucial especially due to neighboring Israel and its close ties with Iran what are the investments such powers have made in Lebanese politics and how have they played out during the elections so the the Saudis have really put their weight behind Lebanese forces like Samir Zhaja is their guy they've kind of given up on the Sunnis because there's no figure that can really rally the Sunnis and like I mentioned I mean okay so during this campaign the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon actually went around the country trying to get Sunnis to vote for Lebanese forces and even trying to pay them to vote for Lebanese forces so that's where the Saudi like backing is at right now is behind this you know fascistic Christian party slash militia as for the Americans I mean the Americans in the western countries have poured millions of dollars into certain individuals through their various NGOs and you know outfits like USAID or the National Endowment for Democracy specifically the National Democratic Institute they spent the past I would say like 10 to 15 years particularly Americans trying to fund Shia alternatives to his Bala but that has actually been like a massive failure and then you also had the US ambassador in Lebanon like running around kind of campaigning for this guy Michelle Mawad who a good friend of mine in Lebanon calls the Juan Guaido of Lebanon they poured like 16 million dollars into this guy through USAID and other outfits like that and he was only able to win one seat in parliament so that just shows you like that's been a massive failure to try to gain you know new faces to replace the imperialist order in Lebanon and the reason the western countries are even doing that by the way is because the old faces are so unpopular the sad hadidis are in the religion bloods are so unpopular they need new faces the other avenue for trying to gain new faces of imperialism in Lebanon is the sort of independent reformist candidates so you did see a lot of German money in particular a lot of European money in particular being funneled through NGOs for so-called civil society groups and civil society political parties I don't even know how that can be a thing but there are these like sort of civil society aligned political parties that are very close to the embassies the western embassies a lot of the German and sort of European money has been funneled to these people to try to get new faces to try to represent so-called forces of change but when you look at the program these people want it's not different from the former you know LF sort of future party programs of more privatization and anti his Bala let's disarm them so at the end of the day the western the international community the west has been kind of playing the same game maybe trying to find some new faces but what we see is that despite the millions and millions and tens of millions and maybe if you added it all up from years past hundreds of millions perhaps dollars that have been sort of poured into different political parties and candidates to try to shape the future of Lebanon over the past 20 years it's been a massive failure because like I said his Bala and its alliance are still very popular they haven't been defeated they may be lost a couple seats as a coalition but they still exist and they still exist strong so the west has utterly failed