Beirut is divided into 3 electoral districts. The results for each district are as follows:

Beirut District no.1 : Turnout 31 percent.

Winners: Saad Hariri, 39,499 votes, Ammar Houri, 30,741 and Gebran Tueni, 30,519.

Losers: Ahmed Dabbagh, 7,318, Jihad Dana 253, Khalil Brummana 6,588, Jack Tamer, 23.

Beirut District no.2 : Turnout 29.6 percent

Winners: Amin Sherri, 31,895, Bahij Tabbara, 27,980, Walid Ido, 25,123, Nabil de Freij 27,364, Atef Majdalani, 26,163.

Losers: Adnan Arakji, 7,379, Badr Tabsh, 6,182, Ibrahim Halaby, 3,614, Zuhair Khatib, 148, Nabila Saab, 110, Ahmed Yassin, 28, Ibrahim Mehdi Shamseddin, 4,172, Ali Shahrour, 491, Salah Osseiran, 45, Najah Wakim 14,231, Raymond Asmar, 6,212.

Beirut District no.3: Turnout 20 percent

Winners: Mohammed Kabbani, 24,572, Ghenwa Jalloul, 23731.

Losers: Adnan Trabulsi, 5442, Yahya Ahmed, 1,765.

Overall Turnout in Beirut Region: 28 percent
Total number of eligible voters : 420,000

The above results confirm that Hariri's list won all the 19 seats allocated for Beirut.

As expected, many people in Beirut stayed away because Hariri's victory was a foregone conclusion. Nine of the 19 candidates won by default before elections, since they were unopposed.

Even though Hariri said “this was a vote for his slain father Rafik Hariri", the win makes Hariri, 35, a strong contender to lead the next government and pursue the political and economic policies of his father.

The vote follows two political earthquakes in Lebanon -- Hariri's killing in a bomb blast many Lebanese blamed on Damascus, and the end of Syria's 29-year troop presence.

The second highest vote-getter is Amine Sherri, a pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah candidate on Hariri 's slate with 31,895 votes. Hezbollah and Hariri formed an alliance in the Beirut elections.

The turnout was thinnest in the Christian districts, because
of the boycott by the Armenian Tashnag Party and supporters of Christian leader Michel Aoun.

Beirut had a 34 percent turnout in 2000, when Hariri's father, then cooperating with Syria, also swept the board.

For the first time, foreign observers monitored the polls, with a team of more than 100 led by the European Union.

"Today was a victory for national unity," Hariri told a jubilant crowd on Sunday night. "This is a victory for Rafik al-Hariri. Today, Beirut showed its loyalty to Rafik al-Hariri."

Thousands of supporters drove through the streets, blaring horns and flying Lebanese flags as fireworks lit the night sky over Beirut's center, rebuilt by the slain Hariri from the ruins of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Hariri announced earlier that he and his allies are expected to win 80 to 90 seats in the new parliament. He will therefore be very active until the last day of elections. His first objective is to get rid of the pro Syrian Lebanese president Emile Lahoud.

Rafik al-Hariri's shadow hangs over the elections, not only in Beirut, but all over Lebanon.

"I am happy but my happiness is mixed with sadness," said a tearful Joumana Tabbara, a housewife celebrating the results of Sunday's polling outside Hariri's villa.

"I stood in this spot five years ago when his father won the last election. We were so happy then. This time our happiness is incomplete because someone very dear is missing."

The UN is investigating Hariri's assassination, which was blamed on Syria, but Syria has denied any hand in it.

Source: Reuters, Ya Libnan , Naharnet