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Lebanon held its first election Sunday since a painful economic crisis dragged it to the brink of becoming a failed state, a major test for new opposition groups bent on ousting the ruling elite.

But few observers expected a seismic shift, with all levers of political power firmly in the hands of traditional sectarian parties and an electoral system seen as rigged in their favour.

Lebanon shares power among its religious communities, and politics is often treated as a family business. By convention, the president is a Maronite Christian, the premier a Sunni Muslim, and the parliament speaker a Shiite.

“I voted for change, of course,” said Nabil Bazerji, 64. “Because we can’t continue like this, Lebanon was never in the position that it is in now.”

A new generation of independent candidates ran hoping to kindle the kind of change that a 2019 protest movement failed to deliver, and they looked likely to do better than the single assembly seat they clinched last time.

But most of parliament’s 128 seats are expected to remain in the grip of the entrenched groups blamed for the country’s woes — chiefly the economic downturn that is the worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Turnout in the election was low, with about 32 percent of registered voters casting their ballots by 5:00 pm (1400 GMT), according to the interior ministry.

Most polls closed two hours later, with a few stations remaining open for those still waiting inside, as the vote count began, Lebanon’s national news agency said.

Results are expected Monday.

“It seems almost impossible to imagine Lebanon voting for more of the same,” said Sam Heller, an analyst with the Century Foundation. “And yet that appears to be the likeliest outcome.”

– Years of crisis –

Lebanon’s crisis has been so severe that more than 80 percent of the population is now considered poor by the United Nations, with the most desperate increasingly attempting perilous boat crossings to flee to Europe.

The Lebanese pound has lost 95 percent of its value, people’s savings are blocked in banks, the minimum wage won’t fill a car with fuel and mains electricity comes on only two hours a day.

Deepening the country’s woes, much of the capital Beirut was devastated by the deadly August 2020 explosion of volatile chemicals that had been left for years in a portside warehouse, one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever recorded.

Top political barons have stalled an investigation into the disaster, and legal proceedings against the Central Bank governor over alleged financial crimes are equally floundering.

Lebanon, once described as the Switzerland of the Middle East, ranked second-to-last behind Afghanistan in the latest World Happiness Index released in March.

The army deployed across the country Sunday to secure the election, which Lebanon’s international donors have stressed is a prerequisite for financial aid crucial to rescue it from bankruptcy.

After an underwhelming campaign stifled by the all-consuming economic turmoil, voting was only disrupted by minor incidents in some polling stations.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah group and its allies threatened independent observers of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (Lade) at polling stations, the association said.

– ‘Getting back our Lebanon’ –

Despite government assurances that polling stations would have power on election day, some voters had to use their phones’ torches.

Videos shared online showed people sporting their candidate’s colours and shepherding voters into polling booths, continuing a decades-old trend of vote buying.

The outgoing parliament was dominated by the Shiite movement Hezbollah and its two main allies, the Shiite Amal party of speaker Nabih Berri, who has held the job since 1992, and President Michel Aoun’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement.

One of the most notable changes in the electoral landscape was the absence of former prime minister Saad Hariri, which leaves parts of the Sunni vote up for grabs by new players.

Supporters of Hariri skipped elections and, in Beirut, some set up inflatable swimming pools to show their boycott of the vote.

For many voters, the election was a chance to vent their anger at the entire ruling elite.

“These elections are first and foremost a means of rooting out this political class and getting back our Lebanon,” said Shadi, a 38-year-old whose flat was destroyed in the port explosion, declining to give his second name.

Like many others who posted pictures on social media Sunday, he chose to dip his middle figure in the bottle of electoral blue ink after casting his ballot.

Shocked residents of Buffalo, New York gathered Sunday at vigils and church services to mourn 10 people fatally shot by an alleged white supremacist in an act one official described as “domestic terrorism, pure and simple.”

The suspected shooter, identified as 18-year-old Payton Gendron, was arrested at the scene, a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood after police rushed to respond to emergency calls. 

He had driven from his home town of Conklin, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) away, police said.

Gendron was arraigned late Saturday on a single count of first-degree murder and held without bail, the Erie County district attorney’s office said. He pleaded not guilty.

The shooter was wearing body armor, carried an assault rifle and live-streamed the attack, police said, adding that of the 10 dead and three wounded, 11 were African Americans.

– ‘Military-style execution’ –

Residents gathered outside the store for the vigil, while New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the state’s Attorney General Letitia James and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown addressed a service at the city’s True Bethel Baptist Church.

In alternately angry and mournful tones, speakers denounced the latest eruption of racist violence and the ready availability of high-power guns in what has become a sadly familiar scene across America.

Hochul, herself a Buffalo native, described the crime as a “military-style execution” — she said the shooter carried an AR-15 assault weapon — and said racist messaging was “spreading like wildfire.”

Hochul called on officials of both political parties to “make sure these people crawl back into their holes and stay there.”

Speaking on ABC, she described social media as “instruments of this evil,” saying the platforms allowed racist themes to “spread like a virus.”

The attack evoked memories of some of the worst racist attacks in recent US history, including the 2015 killing by a young white man of nine worshippers in a Black church in South Carolina, and the 2019 attack by a white man in Texas that claimed 23 lives, most of them Latino.

Attorney General James, who is Black, described Saturday’s attack as “domestic terrorism, plain and simple” and said the shooter would be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”

Mayor Brown, speaking Sunday on CNN, admonished “lawmakers in Washington” who he said “fail to act” on gun control.

“The message to this country is these mass shootings have to end. There has to be sensible gun control,” Brown said.

“Enough is enough.”

– ‘Mother and missionary’ –

The gunman shot four people in the store’s parking lot, three of them fatally, before entering the supermarket.

Among those killed inside was a retired police officer working as a security guard. He fired several shots at the assailant before being shot himself, police said.

When police arrived, the shooter put the gun to his neck, but was talked down and surrendered.

The victims were ordinary shoppers and store workers.

One, according to a Twitter post, was a 77-year-old “mother, grandma & missionary” who “loved singing, dancing & being with family” and who for 25 years had run a weekly pantry to feed the poor. 

At a Sunday vigil in Buffalo’s Elim Christian Fellowship church, pastor T. Anthony Bronner urged both prayer and political action.

“Some of us are very angry this morning,” he said, but “we respond in prayer — and we respond on our feet.”

– Hate crime –

The shooting is being investigated as a hate crime and “racially motivated violent extremism,” Stephen Belongia, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo field office, told reporters.

Media reports linked the shooter to a 180-page manifesto that described a white supremacist ideology and laid out a plan to target a mainly Black neighborhood.

A spokesperson for streaming service Twitch told AFP the shooter used the platform to broadcast the attack live, and that the company had removed the stream “less than two minutes after the violence started.”

In addition to mentioning the South Carolina church shooting, the gunman reportedly said he had been “inspired” by the gunman who killed 51 people in a New Zealand mosque in March 2019. 

A semi-automatic weapon used in Saturday’s shooting also had a racial epithet written on its barrel, according to local daily The Buffalo News, citing a local official.

In a video call to True Bethel Baptist Church, New York Senator Charles Schumer called racism “the poison of America” and said: “We must tackle the scourge of gun violence and finally ban the weapons of war from our streets.”

But in the face of a strong pro-gun lobby, past efforts by the US Congress at tightening the nation’s gun laws have generally fallen short — even after horrific shootings.

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest data.

NATO on Sunday pledged open-ended military support for Ukraine, as Finland hailed its “historic” bid to join the alliance and with Western claims that Russia had suffered heavy losses in its push east.

The promise came after Finland jettisoned decades of military non-alignment for a bulwark against Russia, redrawing the balance of power in Europe and angering the Kremlin.

On the ground in Ukraine, Russia announced air strikes in the east, as well as in Lviv, near the Polish border in the west which has largely been spared the destruction of elsewhere.

At a meeting of alliance foreign ministers in Berlin, Germany’s Annalena Baerbock said it would provide military assistance “for as long as Ukraine needs this support for the self-defence of its country”.

“Ukraine can win this war. Ukrainians are bravely defending their homeland,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg added.

Sweden’s ruling party said it was in favour of joining NATO just hours after Finland’s announcement, in a remarkable turnaround in political and public opinion following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said the alliance would look to provide both with interim security guarantees while the applications are processed, including possibly by increasing troops in the region.

In Berlin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he heard “almost across-the-board, very strong support” for the bids, despite misgivings from Turkey.

Ankara has accused both Sweden and Finland of harbouring Kurdish extremists but Stoltenberg said it was not blocking their membership and was confident of finding common ground.

The Kremlin insists the Nordic nations have nothing to fear, in apparent retaliation, has pulled the plug on electricity supplies to Finland, with which it shares a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) border.

Earlier, Western intelligence claimed that Russia has suffered huge military losses in Ukraine and that it will get bogged down in the strategic east because of stiff local resistance. 

Away from the conflict, Ukraine was basking in the morale-boosting glory of the landside win of its entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, the world’s biggest live music event. 

– ‘Lost momentum’ –

On the battlefield, Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had carried out “high-precision” missile strikes on four artillery munitions depots in the Donetsk area in the east of Ukraine.

Airstrikes had also destroyed two missile-launching systems and radar, while 15 Ukrainian drones were taken out around Donetsk and Lugansk, it added.

In Lviv, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytsky, said four Russian missiles hit military infrastructure near the border with Poland.

No casualties were reported and Ukrainian armed forces said they destroyed two cruise missiles over the region. 

Lviv was last hit by Russian missiles on May 3. 

UK defence chiefs said Russia’s offensive in the eastern Donbas region had “lost momentum”.

Demoralised Russian troops had failed to make substantial gains and Moscow’s battle plan was “significantly behind schedule”, UK Defence Intelligence said.

“Russia has now likely suffered losses of one third of the ground combat force it committed in February. 

“Under the current conditions, Russia is unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days.”

Exact, reliable casualty figures have been hard to come by, with Ukraine and Russia regularly publishing claims of enemy dead.

Kyiv says its troops have killed nearly 20,000 Russian troops. Moscow on March 25 said its forces had killed at least 14,000 Ukrainian military personnel.

But both figures are widely suspected to be inflated, and have not been verified by AFP or independent conflict monitors.

The Kremlin said in late March that some 1,351 of its troops had been killed.

A senior NATO military official estimated at the same time that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers could have been killed in the fighting up to that point.

– Eastern push – 

Russia has increasingly turned its attentions to eastern Ukraine after failing to capture Kyiv. 

Western leaders have predicted a drawn-out war of attrition stretching into next year.

But Ukrainian commanders have been more upbeat and expect a turning point by August. 

Russia has been trying to cross a river and encircle the city of Severodonetsk but have been repelled, with heavy losses of equipment, according to the governor of the Lugansk.

Local officials in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv in the north have said Russian troops were withdrawing from the surrounding region, and Ukrainian forces were counter-attacking. 

Ukrainian troops have been fighting a rear-guard battle from a network of underground tunnels and bunkers in the bowels of a steelworks in the devastated southern port city of Mariupol. 

Families of the estimated 600 troops still holed up at the vast Azovstal plant have appealed to China to intervene to secure the release of the dead and wounded. 

The United Nations and Red Cross helped to evacuate women, children and the elderly from the plant whey there were sheltering earlier this month. 

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of the city, said on Telegram that a “huge convoy” of 500 to 1,000 cars had arrived in the city of Zaporizhzhia. 

– Eurovision win –

In war-weary Kyiv, news of Ukraine’s runaway Eurovision success was met with outpourings of joy and relief, bringing some respite from a daily barrage of grim reports of the conflict.

“It’s a small ray of happiness. It’s very important now for us,” said Iryna Vorobey, a 35-year-old businesswoman, adding that the show of support from across Europe was “incredible”.

“I’m very glad,” said Andriy Nemkovych, a 28-year-old project manager. “This win is so very good for our mood.”

The Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania”, a rap lullaby combining folk and modern hip-hop rhythms, won the popular vote of viewers, pushing the UK into second place. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the group, whose lyrics about home took on extra poignancy with six million Ukrainians currently displaced outside the country.

But some were lukewarm. 

“Now, it’s not the most important thing,” said Vadym Zaplatnikov, 61, who insisted that “having Crimea back” would be a much more welcome announcement.

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Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

– Finland and Sweden set to make NATO bids –

The Finnish government officially announces its intention to join NATO while Sweden’s ruling Social Democratic Party says it is in favour of membership in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Less than three months after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, it is a stunning reversal of Finland and Sweden’s policy on military non-alignment.

“This is a historic day. A new era is opening”, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto tells reporters at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Sunday.

– NATO chief says Turkey not blocking bids… –

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that Turkey is not blocking potential membership bids by Sweden and Finland and voiced confidence at resolving Ankara’s stated concerns.

“Turkey made it clear that its intention is not to block membership,” Stoltenberg tells reporters virtually after alliance foreign ministers met in Berlin.

– …says Ukraine can win war –

Stoltenberg says Ukraine can defeat Russia’s invasion, urging the alliance to keep sending military aid to Kyiv.

“Ukraine can win this war. Ukrainians are bravely defending their homeland,” says the defence chief, adding that “we must continue to step up and sustain our… support to Ukraine”.

– Eurovision win lifts spirits –

Ukrainians receive a much-needed boost as a folk rap lullaby wins the Eurovision song contest. 

“Stefania”, which beat out a host of over-the-top acts at the quirky annual musical event, was written by frontman Oleh Psiuk as a tribute to his mother before the war — but its nostalgic lyrics have taken on wider meaning because of the conflict.

“Please help Ukraine and Mariupol! Help Azоvstal right now,” Psiuk says in English from the stage, referring to the port city’s underground steelworks where Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded by Russian forces.

– ‘Very difficult’ situation in east Ukraine –

Ukraine President Volodymr Zelensky warns that the military situation in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region is “very difficult”.

Russia has increasingly turned its attention to the country’s south and east since the end of March, after failing to take the capital Kyiv.

Western analysts believe President Vladimir Putin has his sights on annexing southern and eastern Ukraine in the months ahead but his troops appear to be encountering stiff resistance.

– Zelensky urges support to prevent world famine –

President Zelensky warns that the war in his country risks triggering global food shortages as he calls for more international backing.

“Now support for Ukraine — and especially with weapons — means working to prevent global famine,” Zelensky says.

“The sooner we liberate our land and guarantee Ukraine’s security, the sooner the normal state of the food market can be restored,” he adds.

Before the invasion, Ukraine exported 4.5 million tonnes of agricultural produce per month through its ports -– 12 percent of the planet’s wheat, 15 percent of its corn and half of its sunflower oil.

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