Maha Al-Azar and Nayla Assaf
Daily Star staff

Gabriel Murr appeared to have grabbed a narrow victory in the Metn parliamentary by-election Tuesday as opposition leaders pleaded for calm from supporters who took to the streets in spirited celebrations.
Despite the lack of an official announcement, supporters of Murr and opposition parties that backed him in Sunday’s poll drove to Murr TV headquarters in Naccashe for a victory celebration, stopping along the way to taunt the Michel Murr political machine at its Amaret Shalhoub headquarters.
Security sources said minor skirmishes broke out, with some Myrna Murr partisans breaking windows of passing cars or tearing party flags carried by the vehicles. No arrests or serious injuries had been reported when The Daily Star went to press.
Opposition politicians made repeated calls to their supporters to stay away from Amaret Shalhoub and avoid provoking the other side.
For his part, President Emile Lahoud appealed for the country to put the events of the pervious 48 hours behind it, saying in a statement that the only principle he has adhered to has been “applying the law to all.”
“No criterion” other than the law will be used to settle disputes, he added, saying that this brooked “no exceptions.”
The celebrations began after the Interior Ministry acknowledged Gabriel Murr as winner after apparently discovering a duplication in ballot counts that had somehow passed unnoticed by several tabulation committees. Interior Minister Elias Murr made his announcement of the updated tallies ­ which would secure Gabriel Murr’s victory ­ during a 45-minute news conference, which did not, in the end, involve an official announcement of the results.
Murr’s tense remarks contained veiled criticism of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Justice Minister Samir Jisr and the Gabriel Murr camp. He insinuated that Hariri tried to get involved in the tabulation process, which was presided over by members of the judiciary.
Hariri “called me at 3am to ask me for the phone number of the head of the Higher Tabulation Committee,” Murr said, “but I told him I didn’t even know him.”
He also placed the responsibility for the conflicting reports issued by tabulation committees on Justice Minister Samir Jisr, calling on him to see what should be done with the judges.
As for Gabriel Murr and his supporters, he commented that they had initially announced a victory by a margin of about 2,000 votes, but “left … satisfied with two.”
The ministry’s announcement, however, could not be considered official, as the Higher Tabulation Committee still has to include the corrections in an official report it will then submit to the governor of Mount Lebanon, who will forward the final report to the ministry. Only then can the results be announced officially.
Minister Murr said that after receiving three conflicting reports in succession from the Higher Tabulation Committee, he instructed the ministry’s director-general, Atallah Ghasham, to review the findings.
“At 10am this morning, Mr. Ghasham came and told me that the judge presiding over the tabulation committee had counted the Qaaqour polling station twice, thus placing Myrna Murr ahead,” the minister said. “If (one of )the Qaaqour counts was eliminated, this would place Gabriel Murr ahead of Myrna Murr by 17 votes.”
A source close to Myrna Murr called the Interior Ministry’s calculations a “falsification.”
“The minister has no right to count votes; this is the Higher Tabulation Committee’s duty,” the source said.
The source added that he did not consider that the ministry
had announced Gabriel Murr as winner.
Although Murr admitted that it was not his duty to calculate votes or to review the calculations of the various tabulation committees, he said he had to let “my conscience be my judge.”
“I could have said that it was not my job to correct the mistakes of a judge and leave the matter to the Constitutional Council,” he said, “but I rejected this because … the conscience is more important than the law.”
Prior to Murr’s news conference, Metn MP Nassib Lahoud urged political leaders to back the opposition in its call for an acknowledgment of Gabriel Murr’s victory. He made the remarks after a gathering of opposition politicians at the National Liberal Party’s headquarters in Sodeco.
Earlier in the day, Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt urged the authorities to announce Gabriel Murr’s victory “without further delay.” After meeting with his parliamentary bloc, Jumblatt urged President Emile Lahoud and “those in his entourage” to announce the results, appealing to the president not to consider Gabriel Murr’s victory a “personal defeat.”
Jumblatt also criticized what he described as the confessional flavor of opposition activities, since he and his allies were not invited to a Monday meeting at NLP headquarters.
The Druze leader added that his support for candidate Ghassan Mokheiber in the Metn race did not mean that he supported the authorities against Qornet Shehwan, adding that he backed the lawyer because of his history and the late Albert Mokheiber’s vote against the presidency of Bashir Gemayel, “the candidate of Israeli tanks,” in  1982.

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