With only 28 percent voting in Beirut, Lebanon seems somewhat less eager for democracy than Iraq. Or maybe they were just reacting to a lack of decent candidates. Whoever said this was going to be easy? (ht: Rick Ballard)
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Maybe they got what they wanted when the Syrins left Lebanon.
Isn’t there going to be another election in the south in a few days?
Terrye ó The elections are being done in phases, in different parts of the country.
I almost said the elections were being staged in different parts of the country, but I remembered there were no Democrats involved…
ìMaybe they got what they wanted when the Syrins left Lebanon.î
Everything else may be perceived as mere frosting on the cake. The Syrian Baathists are being humiliated. How many of its top leadership is planning to move to a South Pacific Island? Will Bashar Al-Assad even remain in the country until the end of the year? A tipping point may soon be reached where the Baathist power structure collapses virtually overnight.
Actually, the low turnout is because the results were forgone in Beirut. The party (list) of Hariri’s son was set to win in a landslide. It did. And pre-vote deals between the major political players assured this result. I can see that MSM will try to spin this as some damper on Bush/Chirac’s expert handling of the Syria ouster.
There is this from http://lebop.blogspot.com/2005/05/difference-between-elections.html
First, we’ve been voting since 1992.
Yes, our elections have been very flawed and manipulated. Yes, groups have refused to participate in every election since 1992. Yes, we have not had ideal candidates.
But we have had elections, so this is nothing new. No one is out cheering in the streets because they get to vote. In fact, many people are not even coming out to vote because we pretty much know who will win because of pre-election deals that were made between candidates.
Our happiness was not an event. It’s a new mentality.
Second, our elections are in a completely unoccupied state. It would be much better to compare the 1992 elections to the Iraqi elections. Our country was still fragmented. Large ethnic groups boycotted. The elections took place under foreign supervision. Shia Islamic parties won a significant portion of seats. The elections were very sectarian.
That’s not the case here today.
Third, we’ve been preparing for these elections for a long time. Just before Shaheed Rafiq was killed he was meeting with members of his coalition. He was gearing up to win these elections in a big way. And his party will.
However, we remain disenchanted. We know that the politicians have more power than we do. The government is way too powerful here, and they do not use their power to benefit the man on the street. This is why we are mad. This is what we must change.