Lebanon is in political crisis. Sunday's elections won't change that.

[TexasTowelie]

Lebanon’s parliamentary elections on Sunday hold the possibility of change — however slight — from the corruption, negligence, and stagnation that have crashed the country’s economy, provided relative impunity for the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion, and allowed the extremist group Hezbollah to pick up a greater proportion of seats in the legislature.

Sunday’s turnout within Lebanon could top 60 percent, a 10 percent increase over the numbers in 2018’s parliamentary elections. That, combined with high turnout from the Lebanese diaspora in places like Dubai and Paris, could mean that opposition groups pick up as many as 10 seats in the 128-seat parliament, according to Osama Gharizi, senior program advisor with the Middle East and North Africa Center at the US Institute for Peace. “A sharp increase in voters here would likely drive a large portion of new groups into parliament for the first time on Sunday,” Gharizi, who is based in Beirut, told Vox via email. “The acute economic and governance crises afflicting the country since 2019 should mean a higher turnout than in 2018, which stood at nearly 50 percent.”

Those crises include rampant inflation and high poverty — according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, more than 80 percent of the country’s population of 6.8 million now live in some form of poverty as measured by twenty different indicators, like access to sanitation, health insurance, and school attendance as well as financial indicators like income and wealth. Lebanon’s financial devolution has been years in the making. Staggering debt due to financial mismanagement under central bank governor Riad Salameh, as well as withdrawal of Saudi support due to the increasing influence of Hezbollah and Iran, and political unwillingness to make reforms in exchange for foreign aid, all contributed to the implosion of the economy.

Lebanese people, fed up with the government’s response to the economic crisis it had created, began protesting on October 17, 2019; a proposed tax on the messaging service WhatsApp was the final straw. They demanded the entire government resign, chanting “all of them means all of them,” occupying many of downtown Beirut’s iconic but still bullet-scarred buildings, and demanding an end to the sectarian divisions which pitted the population against each other while enriching the political elites and keeping them in power.

Read more: https://www.vox.com/2022/5/15/23073845/lebanon-elections-political-corruption-economic-crisis-voter-apathy-beirut-port-hezbollah

[peppertree]

1. And an economic crisis - with inflation topping 200%

It was single digits before the Covid calamity - but they refused to enact currency controls.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Lebanon election: Hezbollah and allies lose parliamentary majority

The Iran-backed Shia Muslim Hezbollah movement and its allies have lost their majority in Lebanon's parliament, results from Sunday's election show.

The bloc's candidates won 62 of the 128 seats, three fewer than it needed.

Hezbollah retained its own seats, but President Michel Aoun's Christian Free Patriotic Movement lost support.

A rival Christian party with close ties to Saudi Arabia, the Lebanese Forces, made gains and independent candidates promising reforms won 13 seats.

But the lack of an outright winner and Lebanon's rigid power-sharing political structure means that the chance of significant change is still low.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-61463884