Normal Service Resumes

Again, it's been a while. I went back to the UK for a few weeks, and Dom also returned for a slightly shorter time. The UK rain was a great relief from the oppressive, humid weather Beirut had been having at the time - courtesy of the Gulf, of course. Thankfully it's a lot better now, sunny, clear and with a nice breeze.

There were two by-elections in Lebanon last Sunday and although in most countries they wouldn't normally merit a mention, they were high-profile enough to make it onto the BBC News front page - mainly because of the tensions here at the moment. Most of the time, unless you were a real political animal, you wouldn't realise that anything is amiss. People are out all the time, traffic is bad in the evenings, the bars and restaurants are packed. But there is an underlying current of tension, and these elections could have turned nasty. For background, the elections were being held as as result of the November and June assassinations of MPs Pierre Gemayel and Walid Edo respectively.

Without going into too much detail, because frankly, it's all getting a bit boring, the Beirut seat was uncontested - the Sunni pro-government candidate won easily - and would have done so even if Hezbollah had put a candidate up against him. So Hezbollah didn't bother. The election for the Christian seat in the Metn was a different matter. The father of Pierre Gemayel, Amin Gemayel, stood as the pro-government candidate, and for the party. Against him stood Kamil Khoury, a candidate for the Free Patriotic Movement, the party headed by Michel Aoun and allied with Hezbollah - they make up the 'Opposition' (a few of their supporters are still camped near Downtown). After much mud-slinging, name-calling (including a nasty tirade against the Armenians who had voted for FPM by Gemayel) and allegations of dirty tricks and false calls as to who had won, Kamil Khoury, was announced as the winner by only 400 or so votes.

So we were treated, as we live in the middle of both factions, to fireworks celebrating the 'win' of Gemayel, then, 30 minutes later, to fireworks celebrating the actual win of the other candidate. And this is just for a by-election!!!! Goodness knows how people will mark the Presidential elections next month!!!

Anyway, the BBC article here explains it all much better!