Is Lebanon Trying to Ban Civilians Living Abroad From Voting?

Lebanese expatriates have cast their ballots in the parliamentary elections, set to take place on May 15th inside the country. However, people have spoken up about the tough measures they went through to cast their ballots at voting centers.

In Dubai, the Lebanese consulate asked the people to vote inside the building and refused to open bigger polling stations to fit the number of civilians living there. Due to the large number of Lebanese people living in UAE's Dubai, hundreds of people can be seen waiting in a large line, that reached outside the consulate, under around 45° weather degree.

According to Lebanese expatriates, the consul in Dubai refused to move the voting from the Lebanese consulate to a bigger, more equipped place that might have made the process of voting in the parliamentary elections much easier.

The decision has made people more suspicious of their own democracy; accusing the government of trying to toughen voting measures in order to curb people's will to cast their ballots in the elections, while others claimed that there might be plans to forge the votes.

On the other hand, voters in France, Turkey, and Australia have complained that despite registering their names for voting in the parliamentary elections and receiving a confirmation email, they ended up having no names outside the poll stations and therefore banned from voting.

Some Lebanese people in Australia have also slammed the slow process at polling stations as many people had to wait for a long time to cast their votes.

Furthermore, some Lebanese families who were willing to vote in the parliamentary elections said that their polling stations were chosen far apart from each other, which made the process somewhat inconvenient.

Moreover, once registered in a host country for voting and missing the date, those individulas are not allowed to vote in their country!

Lebanon's 2022 parliamentary election is scheduled to take place on May 15th, 2022. According to sources, this is the first election following the October 2019 uprising and the Beirut port explosion.

Lebanon has witnessed the worst ever economic crisis since the 2019 uprising and the COVID-19 outbreak as the situation in the country has terribly deteriorated after Beirut's port blast in August 2020.