Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri will head to Tripoli on Friday, two days before the by-elections scheduled for April 14, to hold consultations with his allies and to sponsor popular meetings aimed at encouraging citizens to participate massively in the elections.
The by-elections are set to fill the vacant Sunni legislative seat after Lebanon’s Constitutional Council annulled last month the parliamentary membership of Dima Jamali, of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Mustaqbal Movement, as a result of an appeal by unsuccessful candidate Taha Naji, who ran on MP Faisal Karami’s National Dignity list in the May 2018 elections.
Leading sources in Al-Mustaqbal told Asharq Al-Awsat that Jamali would likely regain her seat, facing other opponents, mainly those close to MP Faisal Karami and the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (Al-Ahbash) and the Alawites.
In this context, sources in Tripoli stressed that Hariri’s party was deploying “extraordinary efforts” to guarantee the support of voters to its candidate.
Other candidates include Yehya Mawloud from the Civil Movement, who had run in the last parliamentary elections in May 2018.
By the expiry of the candidacy period deadline on March 30, eight people were successfully registered for the by-elections. The number of candidates rose to nine on Tuesday when the State Shura Council annulled an Interior Ministry decision to reject the candidacy of Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen detained in Iran.
Zakka had submitted his candidacy for the May 2018 parliamentary elections to raise awareness for his detention, but his request was then rejected.
