Hezbollah eyes gains after Lebanon vote

BEIRUT, May 07 (AFP): Hezbollah was poised to seal its dominance of Lebanon Monday with results for the decade's first general election expected to confirm the Iran-backed party as the main winner.

The polls were also marked by a low turnout of 49.2 per cent and the emergence of a civil society movement challenging Lebanon's oligarchs that could clinch a pair of seats in parliament.

Lebanon's sectarian-based power-sharing politics mean no single alliance in the 128-seat parliament will enjoy a stable majority and analysts expect a fragile status quo to be preserved. Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk announced the turnout figure at a news conference shortly after midnight and appeared to blame it on the new electoral law agreed last year.

"This is a new law and voters were not familiar with it, nor were the heads of polling stations," he said. "Voting operations were very slow."

As provisional estimates trickled in, some candidates' supporters started celebrating in the streets after a polling operation marred only by a few violations but no major incident.

Lawmakers had extended their own mandate three times since 2009, ostensibly over security concerns linked to neighbouring Syria's war and political divisions that led to long and crippling institutional crises.

A higher turnout had been expected after the long electoral hiatus but the vote was the first to follow a law passed in 2017 and the pre-printed ballots used Sunday appeared to confuse some voters.

Some voters also said that the sometimes absurd web of local electioneering alliances that saw some parties work together in one district and compete in others had put them off. With an hour to go before polling stations closed, several senior political leaders appealed for an eleventh-hour rush to the ballot boxes but stopped short of extending polling hours.