Polling stations opened across Lebanon on Sunday in the first parliamentary elections since the outbreak of multiple crises. that have sunk this country in the Middle East, indicated ‘AFP’ correspondents.
A total of 3.9 million Lebanese are called to the polls, which will close at 7:00 p.m. (11 a.m. Colombian time) and whose results are not expected until Monday.
Despite the serious economic, social and political situation in the country and the discontent expressed in a popular uprising in 2019, analysts do not expect major changes in the 128 seats in Parliament which are probably in the hands of the parties that have controlled Lebanon for more than three decades.
The last elections of 2018 drew a chamber in which the Shiite Hezbollah movement had a majority in alliance with the parties of parliamentary president Nabih Berri and the country’s president Michel Aoun.
(In other news: The United States exceeds the tragic threshold of one million deaths from covid-19 ).
Then only one independent candidate won a seat, but he resigned two years later, after the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut, in which 200 people died.
In October 2019, with the country sinking deeper and deeper into a serious economic crisis, a protest movement broke out for a more democratic and less sectarian system . Some groups that emerged from that uprising hope to win a seat in Parliament, although their success may be hampered by the fact that they run separately and without a united front.
Total, 718 candidates, of which 157 are women present themselves to these elections that for the international community constitute an indispensable condition for the sending of eventual financial aid.
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