A voter at the Consulate General of Lebanon in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, during the Lebanese legislative elections on May 8, 2022. (Credit: Rula Rouhana/Reuters)
BEIRUT — “From overseas, voting is the only tool we have to make our voices heard,” says Leyla Nahas, a Lebanese expatriate voting from Montreal.
“When I woke up this morning, when I saw on social media the voting queues at the polling center in Dubai, I was brought to tears,” she continued. “When I left Lebanon in 2020, I couldn’t believe it, I was embittered. I was resentful of the political class that expelled us, killed our relatives and stole our future and that of our children. These past months, I closely followed the electoral campaigns and they restored hope in me. There are so many Lebanese who still believe and who regularly fight for their country, honest people with whom I share values,” she added.
“I’m voting to support the suffering Lebanese people, I’m voting for change. I’m voting simply because it’s my duty. I’m voting so that my son doesn’t forget where he came from and so that he may be able to come back to Lebanon someday,” she emphasized.
Nahas admits however that there is a “long battle” ahead in which “voting is an essential milestone,” but “hopes that this vote will mark the beginning of a new political era.”
More than 194,000 expatriates are eligible to vote overseas on Sunday in the parliamentary elections. This is the second time in Lebanese history that expatriates can cast votes for the entirety of the 128 MPs that make up Lebanon’s Parliament. Opposition candidates hope that expatriates will vote to change the ruling political class, accused of being incompetent and corrupt, as the country faces an unprecedented economic crisis that began in 2019.
In 2018, during the last parliamentary elections, only 6 percent of expatriates voted for independent candidates according to a recent report by the Paris-based Arab Reform Initiative.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
