LEBANON OPPOSITION VOTE WIN FURTHER SPLITS CHRISTIANS
by Nayla Razzouk

Agence France Presse — English
August 6, 2007 Monday 1:18 AM GMT

Lebanon’s opposition won a key by-election that left the country’s
Christians deeply divided ahead of polls to elect a new president
who is traditionally a Christian.

Camille Khoury, a candidate backed by Michel Aoun, a Christian
leader from the Syrian-backed opposition, beat by a narrow margin
anti-Damascus former president Amin Gemayel, Interior Minister Hassan
Sabeh said.

Khoury won 39,534 votes, against 39,116 votes for Gemayel, whose
representative has lodged a "complaint on the results," the minister
said in a press conference without giving more details.

Gemayel, a prominent leader of the Western-backed 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.

Sabeh earlier told reporters that the ruling majority candidate,
Mohamad 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 Western-backed majority on former powerbroker
Damascus, which supports the Hezbollah-led opposition.

The two murdered MPs were industry minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian
who was gunned down in a Beirut suburb on November 21 last year,
and Sunni Muslim Walid Eido, who was killed in a car bombing in the
capital 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 Hammud 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 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 Jumblatt, 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 a northern refugee camp continues to rage
after 11 weeks.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress