OPPOSITION WINS METN BY-ELECTION BY NARROW MARGIN, GEMAYEL REAPS VAST MARONITE VOTES

nsf/getstory?openform&94D4DAD5721DD32FC225732F 001D543C
06 Aug 07, 07:21
Beirut

Camille Khoury, the candidate backed by opposition leader Gen. Michel
Aoun beat by a narrow margin former President Amin Gemayel in the
crucial Metn by-election, but the anti-Syrian runner reaped a vast
majority of Maronite votes.

Gemayel, a prominent leader of the pro-government ruling majority,
had been vying to replace his son Pierre Gemayel who was killed last
November in one of a series of attacks blamed by the majority on
Syria. Damascus has rejected the accusations.

Khoury won 39,534 votes, against 39,116 votes for Gemayel, whose
representative has lodged a "complaint on the results," Interior
Minister Hasan Sabah said in a press conference before dawn Monday. He
gave no other details.

Both sides declared they had won a few hours after the polls closed
Sunday.

The daily An Nahar on Monday said the Armenian community in Lebanon
played a key role in the Metn by-election victory.

It said that while Khoury obtained 8,400 Armenian votes, Gemayel got
only 1,600.

Sabeh earlier told reporters that the ruling majority candidate,
Mohammed al-Amin Itani, had won as expected a landslide victory in
another by-election which was also held on Sunday in Beirut.

Sabeh earlier told reporters that the ruling majority candidate,
Mohammed al-Amin Itani, had won as expected a landslide victory in
another by-election which was also held on Sunday in Beirut.

The by-elections were held to replace two anti-Syrian lawmakers killed
in attacks blamed by the anti-Syrian March 14 majority on former
powerbroker Damascus, which supports the Hibullah-led opposition.

The two murdered MPs were Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, a
Christian who was gunned down in a Beirut suburb on November 21,
2006, and Sunni Muslim Walid Eido, who was killed in a car bombing
in Beirut on June 13.

After the end of the by-elections, the two camps immediately called
for self-restraint, as hundreds of supporters from both sides gathered
in public squares amid a heavy deployment of army and security forces
backed by armored vehicles.

One person was slightly injured by youths throwing stones in Beirut’s
northern suburb of Jdeideh where supporters of the two camps had
gathered in the same public square, an AFP photographer witnessed.

In a televised speech Aoun had announced Khoury’s victory over Gemayel,
and appealed for calm.

But Gemayel had refused to admit defeat until official results were
announced and demanded a rerun of the vote in one mainly Armenian
region where he claimed voter fraud.

"We want elections to be repeated in the Burj Hammoud district,"
Gemayel told his supporters gathered in his hometown of Bikfaya.

He said there were reports from that area of people not living there
or deceased casting votes as well as irregularities with voting cards.

The Metn by-election has deeply split Lebanon’s Christians ahead of
polls to elect a new head of state.

The outcome of the poll is expected to set the tone for presidential
elections due to be held in September. Traditionally, the president
is chosen from the Maronite Christian community in Lebanon.

"The legend of Michel Aoun as the sole Christian leader has crumbled,"
Walid Jumblat, a prominent leader of the ruling majority, told
Lebanese television.

"Amin Gemayel has won the political battle. Michel Aoun has fallen
politically despite all his alliances," he said.

Following the by-elections, parliament’s challenge will still be to
elect a new president to succeed pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud
by a November 25 deadline.

While the majority controls enough seats to elect a president, it
needs the opposition to take part for the two-thirds quorum required
for parliament to convene.

The by-elections came amid heightened political and security tensions
in the deeply divided country as a deadly showdown between the army
and Islamist extremists in the northern Palestinian refugee camp
of Nahr al-bared continues to rage after 11 weeks.(AFP-Naharnet)(An
Nahar photo shows Aoun supporters celebrating in Jdeideh)