Lebanon’s largest parliamentary bloc, led by the powerful pro-Iranian Hezbollah armed movement, has lost its majority in parliament, according to the final results of the legislative elections announced Tuesday (May 17th) by the Minister of the Interior. The Shia movement and its political allies, which had the support of around 70 of the 128 MPs in the outgoing parliament, failed to win the 65 seats needed to retain a majority after Sunday’s legislative elections.
The poll was held in a country plagued by the worst socio-economic crisis in its history attributed by a large part of the population, by international organizations and several foreign countries to the corruption and inertia of the ruling class, unchanged for decades. No remedial measures have been taken by the ruling class accused of letting the country sink. In this context, the independent candidates, from the protest movement launched in October 2019 and which lasted a few months to demand the departure of the political class, achieved good scores, with at least 13 candidates having obtained seats in Parliament.
They could line up in opposition to the traditional parties and position themselves as kingmakers for the formation of the new government.
Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal retained all their seats, 27 in number. Unprecedented, two independent candidates managed to win a seat in South Lebanon that had been held by Hezbollah’s allies for three decades. The Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that has been part of the political class almost unchanged for three decades and firmly opposed to Hezbollah, announced that it had obtained at least 18 seats, compared to 15 seats in 2018.
