It will be the most contested district in the 2005 parliamentary elections.

There are 2 major electoral Lists. One is headed by Walid Jumblatt's alliances and the other by Talal Arslan's allinaces. This district is allocated 11 seats in the 2005 Parliament of 128 members as follows: 5 Maronites, 3 Druze, 2 Shiites and on Greek Orthodox.

Jumblatt is allied with the Lebanese forces (Samir Geagea), Hezbollah, Amine Gemayel and Dory Chamoun's Tigers. Talal Arslan is allied with General Aoun.

The electoral list of Jumblatt is as follows:

Maronites: 5 Elias Abu Assi, Edmond Naim, Fouad as-Saad, Antoine Ghanem and one of these 3 (Salah Honein, Abdallah Farhat, Henri Helou)
Druze: 3 Akram Chehayeb, Ayman Choucair, Faisal Sayegh
Shiites: 2 Bassem as-Sabeh, Ali Ammar
Greek Orthodox: 1 Antoine Andraos

Jumblatt is expected to announce his final official list on Friday.

Talal Arslan's list is as follows:

Maronites: 5 Hikmet Deeb, Assad Abu Raad, Pierre Dakkash, Shakeeb Kortbawi, Naji Gharios
Druze: 3 Talal Arslan, Issam Sharaf Eddine, Dr. Ghaleb Al Awar
Shiites: 2 Ramzi Kanj
Greek Orthodox: 1 Marwan Abu Fathel

Hassan Khalil , who was previously on the Arslan list for the other shiite seat was taken off, since Hezbollah has declared its support to the Opposition, headed by Jumblatt and Hariri alliance.

Aoun has also announced his 5-man Metn list for the upper Metn district as follows: Ibrahim Kenaan, Dr. Salim Salhab, Dr. Nabil Nkoula, retired Gen. Edgar Maalouf and Ghassan Mokhaiber. This list will Lahoud, Gemayel list which has not been announced yet , but will probably look like this: Nassib Lahoud, Raffi Madeyan, Pierre Gemayel, Wadih Hajj, Gabriel Murr, Eddi Abil Lamaa, Philippe Maalouf and another undetermined-yet contestant for an Orthodox seat, according to An Nahar Neswpaper.

While Jumblatt and Marwan Hamade won the elections in the Chouf district as unopposed candidates, district no. 3 is going to be the most hotly contested. The final vote count could show differences of few thousands or even hundreds, between one candidate and another, which will cause a lot of anxiety and excitement. In the 2000 elections, Jumblatt left one spot on his list unfilled so that Arslan could win as unoppsed, but not this time. Talal Arslan, a staunch Syrian loylist slandered and defamed Jumblatt during the past months, which forced Jumblatt to nominate Faisal Sayegh as a replacement for Arslan.

Note: Picture shown is of Baabda's Government office " Saraya Baabda"
Sources: Ya Libnan, Naharnet