Caza - Zgharta

A Direct Study in the Legislative Elections – 2000 –

The North Second Constituency

By : Paul B.M. Duwayhi

Here are summaries of the chapters of the book published in September 2001. The study deals with the elections in the Second North Constituency, it retraces the statistical history of elections back from 1960 till the year 2000. The summary of the book comes under a statistical aspect. The parts that are reviewed here are the parts related to the Caza of Zgharta Zawieh and focusing mostly on the candidates of the Caza. 

Chapter One: The new constituency

The election law, that was amended in the 6^th of January 2000, adopted two constituencies in North Lebanon. For the first time in the political history of Lebanon, a Caza or district was divided in two. The North Lebanon second constituency was formed geographically of the followings: the city of Tripoli, the Cazas of Zgharta, Koura, Batroun and the coastal part of the Caza of Dennieh (Minieh and surroundings).

This constituency counted 361106 registered potential voters. The table below shows the repartition of the voters and the seats geographically. 

The repartition of seats geographically or by taking account of a number of listed voters, is arbitrary. For example the cazas of Batroun and Koura have the same number of listed voters but not the same number of seats. In Minieh one seat is allocated to 32862 listed voters whereas in Koura, one seat represents 17447 listed voters. The number of seats attributed to a Caza obey no rule, it is simply a matter of attributing seats to places where potential pro-government candidates are likely to become potential winners.

In the table below are the "cazas" forming the second constituency of North Lebanon, the number of seats attributed geographically to each Caza and the number of listed voters supposedly represented by a seat.

The next table shows the distribution of the listed voters based on their religion.

The Muslim listed voters are represented by 7 seats and the Christians by 10 seats. This distribution of seats was initially set in the election law of 1992. In that year the numbers of the listed voters were totally different. The Christians were outnumbering the Muslims in that constituency. It seems today, as we look at these figures, that the election law favored one faction. To understand what happened we must go back to the number of listed voters of 1992 and the "famous" decree that allowed thousands (still today nobody knows the number) to become Lebanese citizens in 1993. This decree was a major cause in the increase of Muslim voters in the years 1996 and 2000. The table below shows the increase in the listed voters in each caza. In one column (column # 4yellow) you can notice the percentage increase between 1992 and 1996 and in a second column (the last column yellow) the percentage increase in listed voters between 1996 and 2000.

The number of listed voters increased in Dennieh between the years 1992 and 1996 by nearly 40%, while the percentage increase between the years 1996 and 2000 was 10.34%. This is an example of how the Nationality Decree dumped numbers and numbers of new voters. To be more specific, here is a comparative table of the listed voters according to their religions and their numbers in 1992 and in the year 2000.

The "religious" distribution of seats according to the number of listed voters was logical in 1992 as Christians were 54.29% of the total listed voters, but as we said, the demographic changes caused by the "Nationality Decree" resulted in an illogical  distribution of seats in the years 1996 and 2000.

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Copyright Paul Duwayhi 2001