{"id":1073,"date":"2009-06-08T01:04:23","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T05:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1073"},"modified":"2009-06-14T17:54:23","modified_gmt":"2009-06-14T21:54:23","slug":"a-lebanese-election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1073","title":{"rendered":"A Lebanese election day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Paul Adams<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Zahle, Lebanon<\/p>\n<p>E-day was long and exciting. Unexpectedly high turnout and overly large polls produced very long lines to vote in Zahle, the hotly contested city in the Bekaa Valley where I was stationed. The problem was especially serious in women&#8217;s polls. (In Lebanon, most people vote in gender-specific polls, and most also in &#8220;confession&#8221;-only polls, i.e. Sunnis vote with Sunnis, and Greek Orthodox with Greek Orthodox, etc..)<\/p>\n<p>We say plenty of verbal aggression and pushing and shoving, but no real violence. I retuned to my hotel at 1 a.m. after going to the court of revision, but was kept up until 3 a.m. with all the celebratory gunfire though.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4616_2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1074\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4616_2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"325\" \/><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some of the voters we saw waited as long as 4 hours to vote. Women&#8217;s polls were especially problematic. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4605_2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1076\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4605_2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"341\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A minister draws a crowd when visiting an especially chaotic polling station in a village near Zahle.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4636_2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1078\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4636_2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"668\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"center;\">Hezbollah party agents &#8220;scrutineer&#8221; the voting process.<\/p>\n<p style=\"center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4535.gif\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1080\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4535.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"636\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"center;\">\u00a0A Hezbollah voter wearing party colours.<\/p>\n<p style=\"center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4531_2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1081\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4531_2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"705\" \/><\/a>Waiting to vote.<\/p>\n<p style=\"center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4586_2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1082\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_4586_2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"318\" \/><\/a>More waiting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"center;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Paul Adams teaches journalism at Carleton and in is Lebanon this week as an election observer with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Adams Zahle, Lebanon E-day was long and exciting. Unexpectedly high turnout and overly large polls produced very long lines to vote in Zahle, the hotly contested city in the Bekaa Valley where I was stationed. The problem was especially serious in women&#8217;s polls. (In Lebanon, most people vote in gender-specific polls, and most also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-political-stragegy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}