About 195,000 Lebanese registered to vote on Sunday in 48 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, member states of the European Union and many African countries.
The vote is scheduled to take place in Lebanon on the fifteenth of May.
Among those voting in Sunday’s vote are many Lebanese who have fled the country over the past two years amid the historic economic collapse.
The economic decline is due to decades of corruption and mismanagement by the political class that has run the small country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Parliamentary elections are held every 4 years, and the last elections in 2018 gave majority seats to the powerful Iranian-backed group Hezbollah and its allies.
This year’s elections to choose the 128-member House of Representatives are the first since the start of the economic and financial crisis in October 2019, which led to a wave of nationwide protests.
It is also the first elections since the massive explosion that occurred on August 4, 2020, in the port of Beirut, which killed more than 200 people, injured thousands, and caused widespread damage to the capital.
Little change is expected from the vote, as the main political parties and politicians remain influential while running for the elections, while opposition figures are divided.
The main Western-backed parties hope to strip Hezbollah of its parliamentary majority.
194,348 voters are scheduled to cast their ballots in 192 polling stations around the world, many of them in Lebanese diplomatic missions.
During Friday’s vote, 59.45 percent of the 30,929 registered voters cast their ballots, according to Foreign Minister Abdullah Bouhabib.
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