Tuesday 9 June 2009

"Popular Majority" Goes to… Opposition with 55% of Votes


"Popular Majority" Goes to… Opposition with 55% of Votes
Hussein Assi Readers Number : 190

09/06/2009 "There is a difference between parliamentary majority and popular majority," Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah recalled on Monday while commenting on the elections' outcome.

Yes, the parliamentary majority is not necessarily the same as the popular majority…

The Lebanese case seems to be the best example. Thanks to the electoral law, the majority of elected members of the Parliament does not necessarily represent all Lebanese. If another law was applied, other results would emerge.

Indeed, and out of 1,500,000 votes, the opposition lists got an overall of 839,371 votes (55%) while the loyalty got an overall of 693,931 votes (45%).

Moreover, and after the Free Patriotic Movement tickets achieved victory in most of the Christian districts increasing the number of Change and Reform bloc members by 6, the alliance between Hezbollah and AMAL movement proved to be once again the strongest in Shiite districts where the support exceeded 92% of voters.

In Kesrouan, the opposition list headed by MP Michel Aoun got 31,152 votes while the alliance between the March 14 bloc and the so-called independents couldn't get more than 26,058 votes. The same goes for the Metn district where 47,453 voted in favor of the opposition while 46,688 voted for the loyalty.

In Zgharta, the list headed by the leader of the Marada movement Sleiman Franjieh received 18,200 votes while the loyalty list headed by Michel Moawwad got only 14,689 votes. In Baabda, the opposition got 44,783 votes while the loyalty got 36,490 votes. The same goes for Jbeil where the loyalty got 20,329 votes while the opposition got 28,592 votes.

In the South, the opposition's victory was even the hugest. In Tyr, for instance, 68,558 voted for the opposition. However, the loyalty couldn't get more than 1,686 votes. In Nabatieh, the loyalty's status wasn't better where they couldn't get more than 3,000 votes compared to 58,985 for the opposition. In Hasbayya, 48,648 voted cast their ballot in favor of the opposition. In contrast, only 12,056 voted for the loyalty.

Jezzine was different since it witnessed a "special" battle between opposition groups. Yet, the opposition proved to be the strongest in the district where it secured 20,500 votes at the time the loyalty only got 6,948 votes. In Zahrani, 44,480 people voted in favor of the opposition while 3,100 people voted in favor of the loyalty.

Meanwhile, the so-called "battle" of Baalbeck-Hermel seemed to be one of the most interesting battles. In the resistant district, the opposition alliance ticket was able to get 105,756 votes in an average. The others only got, also in average, 14,283 votes.

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