Lebanese expats were denied the chance to participate in the 2009 parliamentary elections and it looks like they are going to be excluded as well from the 2013 elections, especially that our dear Foreign Minister is treating this issue as if it’s some sort of joke. In fact, according to the report he submitted to the government 3 days ago, only some 3,009 expats had registered to vote at Lebanese embassies and missions to take part in the 2013 elections while Assafir’s earlier study revealed that there are almost 1 million Lebanese expats eligible for voting.

I managed to get from a source the distribution of those 3009 and they clearly show how unprofessional and lousy this report is. Here is the list of cities and number of registered voters as provided by the foreign ministry:

State or City / number of registered voters
Istanbul 19
Indonesia 15
Detroit 77
Oman 181
New York 110
Washington 132
Los Angeles 9
France 742
Montreal 0 Canada
Ottawa 0 Canada
Brussels 117
Bogota 20
Bucharest 16
Britain 20
Austria 20
Canberra 11
Sydney 1
Prague 10
Buenos Aires 0
Tunisia 12
Rio de Janeiro 0
Freetown 519
Caracas 5
Conakry 89
Manama 29
Senegal 161
Asuncion 0
Madrid 70
Kuwait 23
Angola 0
Zambia 0
Mozambique 0
Zimbabwe 92
Malawi 89
Botswana 18
Namibia 16
Marseille โ€“ France 37
Guinea 63
Dubai 14
Melbourne 50
Kuala Lumpur 1
Switzerland 17
South Africa 0
Jeddah 0
Doha 21
Vienna 63
Kazakhstan 25
Stockholm 84
Sofia 6
Abidjan Cote โ€“ dโ€™Ivoire 6

0 Lebanese registered in Montreal and Ottawa while 92 registered in Zimbabwe. 89 Lebanese registered in Conakry, which is the capital of Guinea, while none of the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in Brazil bothered registering. Needless to say, this report is a joke and was rejected by a large number of officials. I mean how is it possible that 0 or barely 10 Lebanese register in major cities ( 1 in Sydney) while 25 register in Kazakhstan?

Maybe it’s better if Adnan Mansour resigns and let someone handle the expats file and other files in a decent and professional manner. In fact, I think the expats voting should not be handled by a minister but by an independent committee at one distance from all parties and capable of handling such a large task.