Sabine Darrous and Maha Al-Azar
Daily Star staff

Officials struggled Monday to reach a consensus over a controversial vote tally in Sunday’s Metn by-election, as opposition leaders threatened massive political retaliation if the government failed to declare Gabriel Murr the winner.
As The Daily Star went to press, President Emile Lahoud was holding talks at Baabda Palace with Maronite bishops Youssef Beshara and Roland Abu Jaoude, in what appeared to be an emergency session on the controversial poll.
The Interior Ministry postponed an afternoon news conference to announce the winner of the race for the Orthodox parliamentary seat.
According to political sources, the ministry was prepared to declare Myrna Murr the winner of the vote after her uncle, Gabriel Murr, was unofficially announced the victor late Sunday night. But Myrna Murr’s victory rests on a controversial decision to discount the results from a polling station in the village of Hemlaya.
Not counting the Hemlaya results, Myrna Murr obtained 34,760 votes, just 15 more than Gabriel Murr.
However, if the Hemlaya votes are included, Gabriel Murr wins by a razor-thin three votes.
The controversy over Hemlaya stemmed from disagreements over both vote counts and the number of total voters, in addition to the presence of a single vote without a signature next to it on the official record.
The Higher Vote Tabulation Committee, which is responsible for verifying the results, met for a second time Monday to make a final decision over the mix-up when the committee could not decide during its earlier meeting how to count the results of polling station 303.
Sources said that after its second meeting, the committee, headed by Magistrate Elias Abu Nassif, sent a report to Interior Minister Elias Murr that included a final decision, but nothing official was announced by the ministry.
After its first meeting, the committee sent the ministry a report Monday at 4am that gave Myrna Murr a 15-vote victory, but the report also included a tally in favor of Gabriel Murr if Hemlaya was included.
According to the report, Myrna Murr received 34,760, Gabriel Murr 34,765 and Ghassan Mokheiber 1,772.
However, the report also included an addendum that included Hemlaya, giving Gabriel Murr a three-vote victory.
According to the addendum, Gabriel Murr received 34,894 votes, Myrna Murr 34,891 and Ghassan Mokheiber 1774.
The committee offered no judgment on which vote count should stand in its first report.
The interior minister, however, returned this report, calling on the committee to make a final decision according to Article 60 of the Election Law, which would then allow the ministry to make a formal announcement of the result.
With an official announcement on hold, officials scrambled to reach a compromise, while opposition leaders complained of a stolen election.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, President Emile Lahoud downplayed the controversy. The president said the law should be the “only guide in such cases,” arguing that legislators had prepared the right mechanism to deal with such results, based on similar cases.
The president also recommended patience before “embarking on behavior that could undermine national interests, which should remain above all other considerations, especially in this difficult period Lebanon is going through.”
Lahoud met with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Rafik Hariri at Baabda Monday afternoon to assess the situation and to secure an acceptable way out of the impasse.
But opposition politicians warned the Interior Ministry that if it failed to acknowledge Gabriel Murr’s “victory,” it would have to deal with a “grave escalation.”
A meeting held at the National Liberal Party headquarters in Sodeco grouped more than 25 opposition politicians, who said they “categorically rejected” the Interior Ministry’s alleged falsification of ballot counts and insisted on Gabriel Murr’s victory.
They called on “the Lebanese people to stay totally prepared to carry out actions within a democratic context.”
Participants said that everything was possible in case the ministry did not announce the results “within hours.”
Several insisted that their response would not be limited to statements and pledged to see the matter “through to the end.”
NLP president Dory Chamoun said that the opposition would consider using all “the democratic non-violent” means at its disposal to protest the contested vote counts.
“And these include protests, resignations, strikes,” he said.
Those attending the meeting included Mokheiber, Gabriel Murr, An-Nahar general director Gebran Tueni, Metn MPs Nassib Lahoud and Pierre Gemayel, National Bloc leader Carlos Edde, former President Amin Gemayel and other opposition leaders.
Nassib Lahoud and Chamoun also met with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir at Bkirki in the presence of Bishop Youssef Beshara to discuss the vote count.
After the meeting, Nassib Lahoud warned of a “huge national crisis” if Myrna Murr were declared the winner.
The MP called on the interior minister to abide by the decision issued by the Higher Vote Tabulation Committee, which he said had “counted the votes in ballots” and announced Gabriel Murr as the winner.
“I was there when Judge Elias Abu Nassif announced the results in the presence of (Metn MPs) Michel Murr and Pierre Gemayel,” he said.
Nassib Lahoud had announced at 4am from outside the Jdeideh Serail that Gabriel Murr had won the seat. “The Interior Ministry is trying to steal the opposition’s victory by canceling one of the polling boxes and converting the victory to its favor,” Nassib Lahoud said.
He added that the ministry “has no legal say in elections and its role is limited to the announcement of the results … They should either announce the real results issued by judges or we will be confronting a big national crisis,” he warned.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Samir Jisr denied a report that he had presided over a meeting of polling station committees for “deliberations” prior to the announcement of the final results of the by-election.
In a statement, Jisr also denied reports that he went to the Serail in Jdeideh for a meeting with polling committees.
“I didn’t go to Jdeideh for a meeting with polling committees and invited nobody to such a meeting. Moreover, there is no such thing as a ‘deliberations committee,’ but when polling committees meet they deliberate,” Jisr said.
Asked whether the failure of a voter to sign a polling register would lead to the cancellation of a station’ results, Jisr said: “I was informed at night by the chairman of the polling committee that he had drawn up a report without canceling the polling results and sent it to the Interior Ministry.”
A result is considered final and official only when it has been announced by the Interior Ministry, he added.

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