(16 May 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beirut - 16 May 2022
1. Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi sitting down
2. Media
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Bassam Mawlawi, Lebanese interior minister:
"The elections were impartial and transparent, transparent enough. They can say what they noticed about matters that could affect the impartiality of the elections or the accuracy of the election results. If there was a dispute in Baalbek that led to an argument between two people or if an election representative went in and out, we can see the voting percentage in Baalbek. Even the person who complained about what happened in Baalbek ended up winning in the election."
4. Media
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Bassam Mawlawi, Lebanese interior minister:
"No one expected that the elections would happen in Lebanon, which has no electricity and to conduct the counting in 6,900 polling stations without the electricity getting cut. We worked on this in detail."
6. Various of media
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Bassam Mawlawi, Lebanese interior minister:
"When I first sat here, we had four districts that had been finalized and that I was going to give you their results, and now I am giving you seven. As we are sitting together, the results are coming in."
8. Cutaway of Mawlawi speaking as seen in camera screen
9. Officials leaving
STORYLINE:
Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group and its allies suffered losses in this weekend's parliamentary elections, with preliminary results on Monday showing some of their most vocal opponents picking up more seats and several of their traditional partners routed out of the legislature.
At a news conference in Beirut on Monday, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi read out the names of 49 winners, out of the 128 seats.
Results continued to trickle in during the conference and the interior minister was announcing results successively.
Several candidates lodged complaints claiming irregularities and forgery, which Mawlawi dismissed as minimal.
"The elections were impartial and transparent, transparent enough," he said on Monday.
The biggest winner appeared to be the nationalist Christian Lebanese Forces party led by Samir Geagea, overtaking the Free Patriotic Movement founded by President Michel Aoun as the largest Christian bloc in Parliament.
The Lebanese Forces is a strong critic of Hezbollah, and has received funding from Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional foe.
FPM, which has been a Hezbollah ally since 2006, suffered a serious setback, losing several seats.
Meanwhile, independents and newcomers, including those from the 2019 protest movement, scooped up at least 10 seats.
With votes still being counted, unofficial results showed independents were able to unseat several longtime politicians from parliament, including Hezbollah-allied Druze politician Talal Arslan for the first time in 30 years.
Asaad Hardan, a strong Hezbollah ally in south Lebanon, reportedly lost his seat to an independent, Elias Jradi.
Despite the apparent setback, Hezbollah and its main Shiite ally, the Amal group of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, are likely to retain the 27 seats allocated to the sect.
It was not clear, however, whether the Iran-backed group and its allies would hang on to the majority they have held since 2018, when they grabbed 71 of the 128 seats in parliament.
The preliminary results point to a shift, but more turmoil lies ahead.
With two main blocs — Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces — opposed to each other, analysts said the results could be more paralysis.
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