HOULA, Lebanon, 6 June 2005 — Syria’s staunchest allies Hezbollah and Amal swept south Lebanon’s general elections yesterday, in a victory widely seen as a vote for anti-Israeli fighters to keep their weapons.
The Amal-Hezbollah list, dubbed the “steamroller”, claimed it had won all 23 seats up for grabs in the two southern constituencies by a landslide.
“I thank all my people in the great south for renewing their confidence in the list and for the victory of all its candidates,” Amal leader and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told a news conference in the south.
“The results have not changed from the past at all and the south came out to say its word for resistance, for liberation, for development,” he said after polls closed.
Many in the Shiite heartland see a vote for Hezbollah as a vote for the group to retain its arms as a defense against neighboring Israel, which occupied the south for 22 years until its 2000 pullout.
Hundreds of supporters waving green Amal flags celebrated outside Berri’s villa as results began to trickle in. Others drove through streets of southern villages and towns flying yellow Hezbollah and Amal flags.
Hezbollah, which Washington labels a terrorist group, and the more moderate Amal are the dominant forces among the Shiites, Lebanon’s largest sect.
Lebanon’s first general elections since Syrian troops quit their smaller neighbor are being held region by region over four weekends until June 19.
In the south the Amal-Hezbollah slate had won six seats by default before a single ballot was cast, due to a lack of challengers.
Voting got off to a slow start but picked up during the day and Interior Ministry sources said turnout among the 675,000 eligible voters was 45 percent by the close of polling at 6 p.m.
Damascus backed both Amal and Hezbollah during and after the 1975-1990 civil war, and Shiites largely stayed away from anti-Syrian street protests that swept Beirut after the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Those protests, which united Christians, Sunnis and Druze, forced Syria to bow to world pressure and end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April. The biggest challenges facing the new Parliament will include a UN resolution demanding the disarming of Hezbollah and the fate of President Emile Lahoud, a close ally of Syria.
Lahoud rejected yesterday renewed opposition demands that he resign over Hariri’s death and the killing of a prominent anti-Syrian journalist last week.
Central and eastern Lebanon will vote next weekend in what promises to be the most heated round.
At least five people were wounded in pre-election violence east of Beirut yesterday when a gunbattle erupted between supporters of rival Druze parties armed with assault rifles.
The anti-Syrian opposition is expected to win in most parts of Lebanon, buoyed by public sympathy over Hariri’s death and by his son Saad’s landslide in the first round in Beirut last week.
But the key issue in the south is different. Banners in many southern towns urged voters to choose the Amal-Hezbollah list as a rejection of international pressure to disarm the group, whose attacks were instrumental in driving Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
