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Voting Starts in Southern Lebanon
MARJAYOUN, Lebanon, Sept 9 (News Agencies) - Voters went to the polls Sunday in southern Lebanon's first municipal elections since 1963 - following decades of Israeli occupation, civil war and other troubles, news agencies reported.
"The elections are taking place in a very calm way ... this is a new victory over Israel," said Sheikh Nabil Qaooq, the top official of the Hezbollah resistance movement in southern Lebanon, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"Israel is the only side which is annoyed by our alliance," Qaooq said referring to Hezbollah's alliance with the resistance group Amal.
Lebanon's Interior Minister, Michel Murr, hailed the high turnout at midday, telling a press conference that no security breaches or complaints had been reported.
The elections began amid a heavy deployment of Lebanese police forces and army troops across the region, liberated last May after 22 years of Israeli occupation.
A Lebanese official told AFP that the polling stations would remain open for an additional hour, until 6.00 p.m. (1500 GMT), due to the high turnout.
Unlike in Lebanon's parliamentary polls, municipal seats are not distributed along confessional lines, but candidates' lists are traditionally split equally among the respective Muslim and Christian communities present in the district.
Some 115 Lebanese towns and cities will elect new municipal councils and mayors for the first time since 1963.
The rest of the country went to the polls in 1998, nearly a decade after Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war ended, but the south was unable to participate in elections because it was still under Israeli occupation.
Israeli occupation troops pulled out in May 2000, following a resistance campaign led by Hezbollah and Amal, both of which have long vied for the leadership of the Shiite Muslim community - Lebanon's largest.
But, as with national legislative elections held last year, Hezbollah and Amal formed an alliance in this region of some 500,000 people, where their partisans make up the majority of the population.
Hezbollah said in a statement published by newspapers Sunday that the "coalition between Hezbollah and Amal ... protects the solid and unified resistance in the face of the [Israeli] enemy's threats."
The two groups are well established in the south, not only because of their long-time military presence but also because of their extensive charity work and in the reconstruction of the region underway since the Israeli pullout.
The vote also comes amid unprecedented debate over the future role of the country's neighbor and effective power, Syria, which has maintained thousands of troops in Lebanon ever since the early years of the civil war.
Real electoral battles can be expected in towns and villages where the majority of inhabitants are either Christian or Druze, AFP reported.
The partisans of Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, a leading critic of Syria's domination of Lebanon, have gained popularity since the patriarch denounced prison sentences handed down against hundreds of the some 3,000 people accused of collaborating with Israeli occupation forces.
In predominantly Druze-inhabited areas, there is also expected to be a stiff contest, with the battle lines drawn between supporters of the Progressive Socialist Party of anti-Syrian Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and those of Talal Arslan, who is backed by pro-Syrian political parties.
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