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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
After inundating the airwaves with ad after ad for parties - with mostly hollow slogans - suddenly everyone shifted gears and it's now every candidate for himself. Reason is simple, in the new Lebanese electoral law, one can either vote for a full list or for one specific candidate (which was called "al sawt al tafidili" or "preferential vote"), the practical effects can be disastrous - meaning, say party X got 1000 votes for its full list, party Y got 950 for its own list, before celebrating, it turns out people from the Y list could have infiltrated the X supposedly winning list due to the infamous "preferential vote" whereby there would be enough people who voted for one candidate (over and above the list) to make him or her win the coveted seat.
Which brings us to now most ads have suddenly gone from party to individual candidates with either the color or generic slogan as a reminder to which list the candidate is running for. There's almost nothing interesting about the individual ads being run, but still expect some to be posted.
