Lebanese Foreign Ministry’s data of expatriates registered to vote from overseas in next may’s parliamentary elections, turned into an issue of political dispute between Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and his rivals in the third electoral district of the north, where the minister is competing on the Maronite seat.
Bassil's rivals accuse him of leaking “data” from the ministry to his own electoral campaign, an act which the minister denied two days ago, when he said following a cabinet session that “this data is not only present at the Foreign Ministry but some parts are also available at the Interior Ministry and at the embassies and political parties.”
Criticism against the Foreign Minister came mainly from candidates running in the first electoral district of Beirut and the third electoral district of the north where the highest number of expatriates had registered to vote in the May race, counting 12,333 voters, an electoral quotient capable to secure the average number of validly cast votes necessary for the candidate to book his seat in the next parliament.
Also, more than 3,000 expatriates had registered to vote in the first electoral district of Beirut.
There are no reports capable of showing the effect of those expatriate voters on the results of the race, due to the confidentiality of the expatriates’ data and because electoral campaigns posses only parts of it.
Around 82,900 Lebanese expats in 40 countries around the world will go to the voting stations to cast their votes for the first time in the upcoming parliamentary elections on April 27 and 29, one week before the home vote.
A dispute emerged concerning the expatriates’ data during a Cabinet session held last Wednesday in Beirut.
Minister Michel Pharaon, who is running as a candidate in the first district of Beirut against a list backed by Bassil’s Free Patriotic Movement, brought the issue after reports said that PFM candidate Nicolas Sehnaoui had reached out to one of the voters in France based on unpublicized information provided by the expatriates’ data.
On Friday, MP Suleiman Franjieh also accused the Foreign Ministry of appointing 50 honorary consulates before the elections to serve as “50 electoral keys,” for Bassil’s own campaign.
