After nine long years, the Lebanese people went to the polls again on Sunday to elect a new Parliament and determine the country’s future leadership. Countless campaign posters across the country tried to assure voters that politicians belonging to traditional parties and newcomers would ensure their interests would be represented. A new election law raised hopes among some that the grip on power by old elites, many of them remnants of the country’s 15-year-long civil war, would be loosened.

In the end, independent candidates managed to win one seat in the 128-member Parliament. The party of Saad Hariri, the country’s Western-backed prime minister, meanwhile lost one third of its seats, its number of MPs now down to 21.

Many headlines in the international press spoke of a victory for Hezbollah, the armed Shia movement, and its allies, which now would control over half of all seats in Parliament.

However, the headlines speaking of a Hezbollah victory “don’t match reality”, Habib Battah, a Lebanese journalist and founder of the website Beirut Report, told The World Weekly. The party, he added, has “in no way” won the Parliament as its seats remained the same at 13, while allies made some gains.

Independent candidates, Mr. Battah stresses, were able to change the discourse during the campaign and forced traditional parties to react by adopting projects previously touted by activists despite winning few seats. “We have to look beyond the numbers”, he says, “this was a very competitive, uncertain race”. Read more via World Weekly