BEIRUT (Arab News) – Parties standing in the May 15 parliamentary elections in Lebanon are hurrying to draw up their candidate lists ahead of the Monday deadline for registration.
Campaigning for the elections is gathering pace as candidates visit their constituents across the country and their rhetoric becomes increasingly inflammatory.
Most of the parties in power have announced their lists and alliances, but the opposition and independent forces are still forming lists and alliances.
A voter in the Baalbek-Hermel constituency told Arab News that the opposition “mobilized all its electoral machinery and began touring the voters, wooing them in Beirut and its southern suburbs, in the Bekaa and the south.”
The voter added that party delegates “enquire about the number of voters in each house and whether they need transportation to reach the polling booth, and ask them to fill out a specific form to communicate with them.”
The voter, who declined to be named, also indicated that delegates were being challenged during campaigns.
“The same applies to other parties whose electoral machines face losing the voter enthusiasm.”
On Saturday, during a tour of southern villages, the head of Hezbollah resistance movement’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, accused “the accomplices who are working to sow discord and stir divisions in the ranks of our resistance environment.”
A delegation of technical experts and election observers has been looking at preparations for the elections, as agreed with the Lebanese Election Supervision Commission.
Headed by EU Deputy Chief Observer Jaroslaw Domansky, the delegation held talks with the commission, led by Judge Nadim Abdel-Malik to discuss how they would carry out their work supervising the elections.