Voters cast their ballots in Beirut and the Metn constituencies Sunday in a tough competition amidst strict security measures to choose successors to two slain anti-Syrian MPs. Based on final results , voter turn out was estimated at 36% of the 140.752 registered voters in Beirut and 51% of the 165.734 voters in the Metn when polling centers closed at 6 p.m. Ballot counting started and final results are not expected before midnight.Reported acts of violence were minimal with only three people wounded in fist fights and 10 arrested for alleged fraud, which is rather customary in Lebanon's elections since independence from French mandate in 1943. Thousands of voters flooded polling stations in Beirut and the Metn in the feverish quest to choose successors to slain MPs Walid Eido, a Sunni Muslim, and Pierre Gemayel, a Maronite.
Shiite participation was at 6% of the sect's registered voters in the Beirut constituency because of a boycott decision adopted by Hezbollah, the faction that leads the opposition. Al-Moustaqbal Movement candidate Mohammed al-Amin Itani was expected to win the competition and sieze Eido's vacant seat from his competitor Ibrahim Halabi of the People's Movement, which is part of the March 8 Hezbollah-led opposition that is backed by Syria and Iran.
Based on initial ballot counting , the campaign officials of the March 14 majority alliance have projected their candidate, ex-President Amin Gemayel, as the winner against , Camille Khoury of Gen. Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement. Al-Moustaqbal followers in Beirut started victory celebrations shortly after polling centers closed. Ballot counting shows that Itani was way ahead of Halabi almost 6/1. Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, who cast his vote early, had urged citizens in Beirut to turn out at polling centers in large numbers to shoulder "your national responsibilities."
Turn out at the Metn was also high due to the ongoing competition between the various Christian factions on leadership of Lebanon's Christians in the forthcoming Presidential elections. Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir in his Sunday sermon had called on "our children to practice their legitimate right in electing who ever they deem fit to represent them in parliament. This is a national duty."
Army units and police patrols threw a tight security dragnet around polling stations as voters waited in lines during the day to cast their ballots in the tense competition. Giant posters of Gemayel and his slain son have been raised in villages and towns, particularly in their hometown, Bikfaya, where voters cast their ballots before heading to the cemetery to place white roses on Pierre Gemayel's tomb. "We visited Pierre to Â… promise him that his blood will not be in vain," Gemayel told reporters. "We love Lebanon and Pierre died for Lebanon and all of us have choice, no matter what the price is, but to serve Lebanon."
Aoun's movement garnered most of the Christian vote in 2005 legislative polls, but his popularity has waned since he entered into a shock alliance last year with the Iran- and Syria-backed Hezbollah.