LEBANON: Expats fly home for elections, but on whose tab?

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The atmosphere at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport was unusually festive for a Thursday afternoon as hundreds of gift-laden friends and family awaited the arrival of their loved ones, many of whom are returning to vote in the hotly contested general elections Sunday.

The race between the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, and the pro-Western March 14 coalition is so tight, in fact, that many parties are footing the bill for their constituents to fly home and vote.

Adon Sanjal, a 23-year-old mechanical engineer working in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, greeted his parents sporting a huge smile and a bright orange T-shirt, a nod to Free Patriotic Movement leader Gen. Michel Aoun.

Sanjal, who said he paid his own fare, said many of his Lebanese friends in Dubai are coming home for the weekend to vote.

‘I usually come back several times a year anyway, but this time I came especially for the elections,’ he told Babylon and Beyond.

‘God willing we who support Change and Reform will win,’ he added, referring to the name of Aoun’s parliamentary bloc and also the principles on which he campaigned, which have proved especially appealing to young people.

Marwan Naim, a 34-year-old sales executive living in Kuwait, said he supported March 14 because he believed it offered Lebanon a more secure future.

‘We just want Lebanon to be a better country, like it was before,’ he said.

Naim also said he paid for his own ticket and had mixed feelings about political parties flying people in.

‘If [the parties] are only flying them in to make them vote how they want, then it’s bad, but if they are helping people who want to come back anyways, then it’s good,’ he said.

But not everyone agreed. As foreign and Lebanese media scrambled to interview new arrivals, hecklers from the crowd could be heard yelling, ‘On whose tab?’

Bassem Arab, 42, who also resides in Kuwait, said he thought the fierce competition for votes was a sign of improving democracy.

‘If there weren’t [such competition], I wouldn’t be coming back,’ he said with a shrug.

Of course some are in it for the free trip. A 29-year-old Armenian Lebanese American, who said he was flown in by a Lebanese party and asked that his name not be used, acknowledged in a phone interview that he knew little about Lebanese politics or the candidates for whom he was expected to vote.

‘I’d never been [to Lebanon], and there was a way to go for free,’ he said.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Throngs at Beirut airport await the arrival of friends and family members, many of whom are returning home to vote in Sunday’s general elections. Credit: Meris Lutz