LOUBNAN – Our Lebanese districts, cities and villages 21-061013 BAABDA DISTRICT Bounded to the south by Lebanon’s main east-west artery, the Beirut-Damascus highway, the district of Baabda is home to the presidential palace, According to figures released by the Ministry of Interior, a slight majority of the 146,161 people registered to vote in Baabda are Christian, with Maronites alone accounting for nearly 40% of the electorate (54, 540). More than a fifth of registered voters are Shia (while the Shia population of Beirut’s southern suburb, the Dahiyeh, no doubt exceeds the total number of registered voters in the entire district, many of them vote in districts in the South rather than in Baabda). Druze are the next biggest constituency in the district, representing nearly a fifth of Baabda’s voters, with remaining 5% of the electorate made up mostly of several thousand Sunnis. The Baabda’s two distinguishing features, the first of which is its identity as part of the Christian community of Mount Lebanon, “which has always been seen as the arena for the coming elections…and so symbolically the fight for the three Christian seats is important.” The other feature is that “the Shia quarters are the capital of Hezbollah. It’s not just any Shia agglomeration…Hezbollah would like to prove in their own capital that, in the people’s plebiscite, their candidates are elected.” Doing so, is complicated by the fact that the Shia voting in the district are not from the South or the Bekaa, Hezbollah’s heartlands, “so it’s the occasion to prove that Hezbollah is not only a party controlling the South and the Bekaa, but that it also has a large presence within the semi-urban or urban Shia of Mount Lebanon.” In 2005, the district, which was joined with neighboring Aley, was occasionally dubbed “the mother of all battles” in the media, and the margin of victory was one of the slimmest in the entire election. Because of the old electoral law, first adopted in 2000, even though separate seats were allocated to Aley and Baabda, everyone in the joint district voted together, which is to say, a resident of Aley had as much say in choosing Baabda’s six seats as did a voter who actually lived in Baabda. In the end, Aley’s large Druze population coupled with the fact that Hezbollah ran a unified list with the parties that would later form the majority (the Future Movement, the Progressive Socialist Party, and the Lebanese Forces), resulted in all 11 seats in the joint district going to a single list. But even then the margin was narrow. Fate has not been kind to the six candidates who were elected to represent Baabda in 2005. Two have died (Edmond Naim died of natural causes and was replaced by consensus candidate Pierre Daccache, while Antoine Ghanem was assassinated and, due to a disagreement between the opposition and the majority, has not been replaced) and it is unclear yet how many of the remainder will make it on to the majority’s electoral lineup. Indeed, neither the majority nor the opposition has announced its final lists for the district. Ghosn, however, said the March 14 list would include Salah Hnein, Edmond Gharios and Elias Abu Assi for the three Maronite seats, and MP Bassem Sabaa for one of the Shia seats. (Hnein and Gharios are independents endorsed by the March 14 coalition.) On the opposition’s list so far are three FPM candidates for Baabda’s Maronite seats –Alain Aoun, Najib Gharios and Hikmat Dib – as well as Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar for one of the district’s Shia seats Whoever is picked, the opposition will probably take both Shia seats, Hezbollah is eager to prove that the quadripartite alliance was the only reason MP Bassem Sabaa, a Shia said to be a close adviser to and former speech writer for Future Movement leader Saad Hariri, was elected. The Christian seats, on the other hand, are much harder to call with the FPM almost certain take one and the other two still anybody’s guess. An “under-the-table deal” between Hezbollah and PSP leader Walid Jumblatt could, perhaps, give another Christian seat to the PSP, while March 14 candidate Edmond Gharios could take the third seat, not, for political reasons as much as because of Gharios’ connections to Michel al-Murr (his father-in-law) and reputation for providing services in the area. As for the district’s Druze seat, one possibility, was that Hezbollah could use the district as an opportunity to bolster the rumored deal with Jumblatt. Noting that Hezbollah had appeared cold to the prospect of a Druze FPM candidate, said there was chance that the Party of God, by not assisting any rival candidate, and thus facilitating the reelection of PSP MP Ayman Choucair, would send a conciliatory message to Joumblat. Both Ghosn and Alain Aoun, for their parts, expressed cautious confidence about their respective sides’ chances in June, and both described the battle for seats in Baabda as hard fought. Given Hezbollah’s dominance in the Dahiyeh, some in the majority have expressed concerns regarding former residents of the area, who, according to Lebanese law, must return to their home district to vote. Kataeb Party leader Amin Gemayel recently proposed setting up special outside polling stations so that such voters would not have to travel to Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods in Baabda that Gemayel said lacked a “suitable atmosphere for them to cast their ballots freely.” Whatever the atmosphere on election day, when the polling stations close, both sides will be closely monitoring the results, as Baabda, beyond being freighted with symbolic importance, is one of the few districts in the country where a real race is underway, and as such constitutes the closest thing to a bellwether district as can be found in Lebanon.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 02:20:42 +0000
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