Al -Jazeera Net Correspondents
Beirut- The countdown began to conduct the third stage of electing municipal councils and optional in the governorates of Sahl Al -Bekaa, the Lebanese (Baalbek – Hermel and Al -Baqaa), on the morning of next Sunday, after completing it in the governorates of Mount Lebanon, Akkar, and the North, amid a wide participation that touched 45% in those governorates, to be concluded on the 24th of this month in the provinces of Nabatieh and the south.
The elections are held in light of repeated Israeli attacks in the Bekaa and South, despite the validity of the ceasefire agreement between the Lebanese and Israeli sides since last November, and after General Joseph Aoun was elected as president of the country last January, which made the proceeding of this entitlement “a will to challenge and steadfast the local community and pave the way to rebuild what the enemy destroyed,” according to the leader of the Amal Muhammad Al -Khashun movement.
Reconstruction projects
The two judges included in the Baalbek governorate – Hermel, adjacent to the Syrian border, are competing 2083 candidates for membership of 84 municipal councils, and the number of members of the councils ranges between 9 and 15 seats, with the exception of Baalbek, which includes 21 seats, where the sects of the 352 thousand judicial voters are distributed according to the following percentages:
- 75 %of the Shiite community.
- 14 %of the Sunni community.
- 11 %of Christian denominations.
Al -Khashin assured Al -Jazeera Net that the Amal movement and Hezbollah are running in the municipal elections with understanding and coordination.
After he pointed out that the last election station in the south will be “the most important in our view”, he described what happened in the city of Baalbek and the villages of the governorate, from the destruction and ruin of the Israeli aggression with “catastrophic”, and added, “This holds us the responsibility for the completion of the municipal entitlement, whether under a tent or over the rubble of destroyed houses, and we will have a national wedding in the Bekaa or in the villages of the front edge in the south, despite the modern Israeli raids on Nabatiyeh And the highlands of Baalbek. “
Al -Khashin said, “We hope from the New Testament to keep pace with the post -entitlement achievement, by making room for those whose homes were affected to start building without administrative complications in obtaining licenses. Stressing that “the municipalities expected to be formed, have a responsibility to create an appropriate ground that allows those who are able to restore their homes, pending the launch of the reconstruction project that is awaiting appropriate financing.”
A recovery stage
The Bekaa Governorate includes 3 districts: Zahle, the Western Bekaa, and Rashia, and the number of voters in it reaches 344 thousand and 63 voters, vote to choose candidates for 231 seats, distributed over 87 municipal councils.
The Zahle City Council, which is the largest in the governorate, includes 21 seats, and the city is an important administrative and tourist center for the Catholic bloc in the east, and it is 55 km from Beirut, and from the Lebanese -Syrian border east 10 km east.
On the family’s family overlap in the city and its 29 villages, the former head of the Kataeb Party in Zahle, attorney Roger Zalqat, says that “the map of municipal alliances in the city is not similar to the central alliances between parties and political forces in Mount Lebanon, for example, so the Kataeb Party and the Lebanese Forces Party are part of an electoral litigation in the city, and this is the opposite of their electoral cooperation in other provinces.”
He also adds that “the Shiite duo (Amal and Hezbollah) says that he is at the same distance from everyone, and he will not interfere in the elections of the capital of the Catalan in the east, that is, the opposite of his alliance with the Free Patriotic Movement in other provinces.”
In his speech to Al -Jazeera Net, Zalqat refused to drop alliances or results of the municipal elections in the Bekaa on the alliances of the parliamentary elections next year. He added, “I think that everyone’s concern is my development with distinction, and everyone is trying to keep pace with the start of the New Testament and its support in facing challenges on more than one level, especially the march of the country’s recovery from many scars.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqd7qalgdjg
Development nature
The writer and political analyst Salah Taqiuddin considers that the popular participation rates in Mount Lebanon, which amounted to 44%, constitutes an essential tributary to translate the content of the discourse of the section that President Joseph Aoun launched at the beginning of his reign, and explains that “the restoration of the decision to build the state comes through the establishment of municipal councils, and I expect that the participation of the Bekaa will be the same if it is not more.”
And after he pointed out that the establishment of new municipal councils, means an interest in economic, environmental and developmental issues for any society in any Lebanese village, Taqi al -Din stressed that “the fortification of society with local governments represents it, constitutes a first brick towards establishing an administrative decentralization system in Lebanon, and this is a very important development requirement, but rather a real challenge to confront the void, and to confront the continuous Israeli attacks since the Palestinian Nakba in general 1948 ″.
In his speech to Al -Jazeera Net, he stressed that “the municipal elections left the party alignments relatively, as we monitored in the first stations and during the formation of the regulations in Zahle and the majority of the Bekaa villages, the effectiveness of families and independents.”
He added, “This does not mean that the parties did not interfere to highlight their power in some places, but the alliances took a more than political nature than political,” stressing the different municipal accounts about the parliamentary entitlement in May.
