Army stand guard as Lebanese vote in key elections

ARMY and police patrols stood guard yesterday as thousands of Lebanese went to vote in a key election to replace two assassinated lawmakers in the politically torn country.

The tense vote was taking place in two electoral districts, one in Beirut and the other in Lebanon’s Metn region, a Christian stronghold where the community is deeply divided.

The elections are to replace cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian who was shot dead in November, and lawmaker Walid Eido, a Sunni Muslim who was killed in a Beirut car bomb in June.

Both were allies of the US-backed Lebanese government and vocal opponents of neighbouring Syria, which controlled Lebanon for 29 years until it was forced out in 2005.

The elections could escalate the country’s deepening political crisis because Prime Minister Fuad Saniora’s Western-backed government called them without the required approval of President Emile Lahoud, who has blocked attempts to replace the lawmakers.

Mr Lahoud is allied with the Hezbollah-led, pro-Syrian opposition, as is parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has said he will not recognise the results of the contests.

Mohammed al-Amin Itani, a parliamentary candidate for majority leader Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, is expected to easily win the contest for Mr Eido’s seat.

But in Metn, the vote for Mr Gemayel’s seat is a bitter contest between Amin Gemayel — who was president of Lebanon for much of the 1980s and decided to compete for his son’s seat on behalf of the ruling coalition — and Kamil Khoury, supported by Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, a former army commander and prime minister allied with the opposition.