Bekaa I

It is in this constituency, which corresponds to the district of Zahle, that an MP was elected with the lowest numbers of votes in 2018: the Armenian Orthodox Eddy Demerdjian, who became an MP with only 77 preferential votes. This is a perverse effect of the current voting system: the list supported by Hezbollah, of which Demerdjian was a member, had reached twice the electoral threshold (so it should be granted two seats), but apart from the Shiite candidate, no other member of this list was able to beat his direct competitors in the other lists. As a result, the remaining votes in favor of the Hezbollah list went to the Armenian Orthodox candidate, as all other seats were already taken.

Zahle has seven seats distributed as follows: two Greek Catholic, one Maronite, one Greek Orthodox, one Armenian Orthodox, one Sunni and one Shiite. In 2018, the traditional leadership of the Skaffs had its twilight there, as the widow of former MP Elie Skaff failed, along with her entire list. The general context is not yet completely clear this year, but some fundamental data points are already palpable: the probable demobilization of the important Sunni Hariri electorate, ally of the FPM in 2018, and the exit of the independent MP Michel Daher from the Aounist parliamentary bloc are likely to weaken the position of Gebran Bassil’s party, in the face of a possible rise in power of the Lebanese Forces. It is true, however, that Hezbollah's support for the FPM could partly compensate for these losses.