The first round of Lebanon’s first election free of Syrian interference since, well, before I was born has started. The next rounds will take place over the next three consecutive Sunday’s, ending on June 19. Candidates will be competing for 19 seats within three districts within the Beirut region. There are 240 polling stations open and 100 observers from the EU and the UN. But it is unlikely to be much of a competition, with Saad Hariri — the successor and son of Rafik Hariri — looking to sweep every seats with nine seats automatically won unopposed. For more information on the electoral alliances that have emerged, read my previous post.

Let the race begin:

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Voters trickled to the polls in Beirut on Sunday in a parliamentary election starting a month after Syrian troops quit Lebanon, with the son of assassinated former premier Rafik al-Hariri seeking a clean sweep.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said early turnout was estimated at a modest 12 percent after four hours of voting in the mainly Sunni Muslim capital. “This (election) is a very important achievement and a proof of our commitment to our constitutional institutions,” he told a midday news conference.

Nine of the city’s 19 seats have already gone uncontested to nominees of Saad al-Hariri, a 35-year-old businessman thrust into politics by the Feb. 14 killing of his father.

Of course, the turnout will grow as the day goes on, but don’t expect anything like a million people flooding into the streets to vote. The reason that people are not turning out in extremely large numbers or so quickly is because the outcome is practically guaranteed to Hariri’s opposition list. While ten of the seats are still contested, those running against him are relatively weak candidates and only one or two of these mya even put up a fight. Due to the deals strucks between the Hariri-Jumblatt opposition alliance and the Amal-Hizb’allah Shiite alliance, and Hizb’allah’s urging Beirut’s Shiites to vote for Hariri’s lists, even these will likely be won fairly easily. So we can all just sit back and relax on this one; the real seat-edging fun won’t start until the North and Mt. Lebanon election battles.

It is very interesting to look at the practically predetermined regions and how the Hariri-Jumblatt and Amal-Hizb’allah alliances work. Besides Beirut, the South (and probably the Bekaa) will definitely go to the Shiite coalition of Amal and Hizb’allah. But looking at the electoral lists of Beirut and the South, you’ll notice that some swaps were made. In Beirut, a Hizb’allah candidate has been included on the Hariri list, while Bahia Hariri, the sister of the slain Rafik Hariri and who is running as an independent, has been included on Speaker Berri’s Amal list to make certain that she is elected. Other than that, Beirut is dominated by the opposition while the South is dominated by Hizb’allah and their partners.

With Beirut’s 19 seats going to the opposition, and the South’s 23 seats going to Amal-Hizb’allah, the composition of the new parliament will not be all that different in terms of the various parties involved. Speaker Berri, widely seen as the one who obstructed parliament from adopting a new electoral law, even has a high chance of remaining speaker. Given that the poltiical alliances have intertwined between almost every group in this election, it may be wise to reconsider just what “opposition” means in this case. Certainly, when Saad Hariri predicts that the opposition will sweep up to 90 seats in 128 seat legislature, it would be impossible the leave out the these other parties. What we are seeing here is not necessarily a sweep or a return to pro-Syria politics, but moreso the forming of a governing coalition based on the interests of Lebanon’s internal groups.

I’ll update this post if there are any more developments on the lines of Beirut’s elections. To thank you for your time, here is a picture of Miss Lebanon: