Update: (Spoke too soon, see below for revised conclusions.)
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appeared on al-Manar this evening to announce Hizbullah’s candidates for the 2009 parliamentary elections. Here is the list and some quick reactions:
Nabatiyeh: MP Muhammad Raad; Sour: MP Muhammad Fneish, Nawwaf al-Moussawi; Bint Jbeil: MP Hassan Fadlallah; Marjayoun: Ali Fayyad; Baalbek-Hermel: Husayn Moussawi, MP Husayn Hajj Hassan, MP Nawwar Sahili, MP Ali Miqdad; Baabda: MP Ali Ammar; Beirut 2: MP Amin Cherri
Nasrallah spent a good deal of the speech insisting that the opposition is absolutely committed to… winning the elections (despite what some have been suggesting, ahem ahem). At the same time, however, the secretary-general stated clearly that the “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc” was not interested in increasing its parliamentary representation.
This means, as I’ve written before, that the onus is really on the FPM to come up with the seats necessary to gain a parliamentary majority (which doesn’t bode so well for the opposition, given the latest Metn polling).
Here’s the take-away though: Hizbullah is only running eleven candidates in this election, as opposed to the fourteen they won in 2005…
(Update): Poring over election lists from 2005 to see which three seats had been dropped from Hizbullah’s 2009 campaign, it became clear that the difference comes down to one Maronite seat in Jezzine (Pierre Serhal), and two Sunni seats in Baalbek-Hermel (Ismail Sukkariyeh and Kamel Rifai). Given that these three candidates are not actually members of the Hizb but rather billed as “close to Hizbullah”, I’d like to revise the premature conclusion that Hizbullah was trimming its participation. In fact, sources say that Hizbullah has nominated retired general Walid Sukkariyeh to his brother’s seat, as well as Emile Rahme to the Maronite seat in Baalbek. Assuming that Kamel Rifai runs again, this would maintain the same number of candidates (14) as Hizbullah won in 2005, even if they give the FPM Sarhal’s seat in Jezzine.
April 1, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Q
Amal is not in the Wafa’ bloc
April 2, 2009 at 5:36 am
Shukran F… I was mixing it up with the 05 bloc (Resistance & Development).
April 2, 2009 at 10:42 pm
QN,
From the coloured camembert chart, one can say that Joumblatt (red) and Aoun (orange) will get the greatest number of seats, followed by Hariri (blue), Berri (green) and Hezbollah (yellow).
April 3, 2009 at 11:40 am
Nidal,
That’s exactly why I picked it! It approximates things pretty well, at least among the opposition. The loyalist side is not as accurate.
April 3, 2009 at 10:23 pm
[...] the April 7 deadline for election lists to be submitted approaching, Hizbollah has announced theirs. The announcement was accompanied with a fresh pledge from Hassan Nasrallah that Hizbullah [...]
April 18, 2009 at 3:12 pm
[...] to the built-in confessional quotas of the Lebanese political system, and the fact that Hizbullah has pointedly refrained from seeking more parliament seats than it won in 2005, a March 8th majority would — by [...]
April 27, 2009 at 11:46 am
[...] agree more. As discussed recently, a March 8th win is really going to be all about the Free Patriotic Movement. No matter how Fox News spins it, [...]
April 27, 2009 at 5:19 pm
[...] A March 8th win is really going to be all about the Free Patriotic Movement (Aoun’s Christian bloc). No matter how Fox News spins it, the reality is that the onus has been placed entirely upon Michel Aoun’s Change & Reform bloc to pony up the seats to push the opposition over the top. And while there may be a congressional effort to introduce something like a Lebanon Accountability Act, I just can’t see a politically expedient reason to do it if the Syrians are adding value to Obama’s Mideast efforts. [...]