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http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&E22B2101C2A24A1DC2256E90002B0AA8

Hariri Takes Beirut, Hizbullah Beats Amal, Skaffs Defeat Hrawis

Premier Hariri’s list swept all 24 seats of Beirut’s municipal council but he failed to get a massive turnout at the polls to assert an unassailable supremacy in the Lebanese capital and over the nation’s Sunni Muslim sect, An Nahar reported on Monday.
Hizbullah claimed a shutout victory in Baalbek early Monday, winning all 14 seats of the city’s council and defeating Speaker Berri’s Amal list that was backed by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the Communist Party and Al Ahbash.

And in Zahleh, the list supported by Industry Minister Elias Skaff and parliament member Nicholas Fattoush snatched all 21 seats of the city’s council, defeating the list backed by the Hrawi clan and reasserting the Skaffs’ leadership in the Middle East capital of Catholics.

These were the main features of Sunday’s second stage of Lebanon’s local elections in the capital and east Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley as sketched by An Nahar and most of the Beirut media.

There were no incidents of violence in Beirut, where the near-boycott of the polls by the Christian population cast a damper on Hariri’s victory. Interior Minister Elias Murr put the turnout of voters at 23 percent.

Hariri’s arch Sunni foe, ex-Premier Selim Hoss, who stayed out of the election battle, said the fact that the boycotters have so heavily outnumbered those who did cast ballots is tantamount to a virtual Hariri defeat.

Hizbullah claimed victory in Baalbek, Hermel and Shmistar, the main Shiite population centers in the Bekaa. But the Party of God suffered a defeat in Brital at the hands of maverick cleric Sheikh Subhi Tufaili, a fugitive wanted on a charge of leading a civil disobedience revolt against the central government in Beirut in 1999.

Murr estimated the turnout in Baalbek and surrounding Shiite districts at 70 percent, an exceptionally high percentage with which Hizbullah trounced Amal along the same lines of the first stage of the elections in Mount Lebanon last week. A similar percentage marked the Zahleh balloting.

The only officially reported incident of violence in the municipal elections happened in the town of Tirbul in the central sector of the Bekaa, where Ahmed Assi was shot dead at a voting center.

Beirut, Updated 10 May 04, 11:11