Lebanese expats in Egypt cast votes in parliamentary election

CAIRO – 6 May 2022: The Lebanese embassy in Cairo and consulate in Alexandria started on May 6 receiving ballots of Lebanese expats in Egypt on the parliamentary election due to convene domestically on May 15.

Lebanese diaspora in eight Arab countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, and Baghdad) along with Iran cast their votes on Friday. Meanwhile, the other expats in other 48 countries will cast their ballots on Sunday.

More than 225,000 Lebanese expats have registered their names to vote in the election, the second voting for the diaspora as about 50,000 Lebanese expatriates cast their votes in the 2018 parliament election, according to the data of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry.

Egypt and Lebanon are working to export the Egyptian natural gas to Lebanon, which suffers from an economic crisis that led to electricity outages, shortage in fuel, high prices of bread and food commodities, and shortage in medical supplies. Lebanon is projected to declare bankruptcy for the lack of liquidity.

The natural gas would pass through the Arab Gas Pipeline, which was implemented in three phases; the first phase started from Egypt’s Al-Arish city in Sinai to Jordan’s Aqaba, with a length of 265 km, a diameter of 36 inches, and a capacity of 10 billion m3 per year, the Jordanian ministry said in a statement last year. The supply of the gas through this pipeline started on July 27, 2003.

The second phase of the joint pipeline was implemented in two stages; the first stage extended from Aqaba to the Rehab, Northern Jordan, with a length of 393 km. The supply of gas to power plants in Rehab began in February 2006. Meanwhile, the second stage of the second phase stretched from Rehab to the Jordanian-Syrian border with a length of 30 km and 36 inches in diameter. The second stage was completed in March 2008.

As for the third phase, it starts from the Jordanian-Syrian border to the city of Homs in Syria. This 320-kilometer pipeline was completed in July 2008. The pipeline is 36 inches in diameter.  The Egyptian natural gas was exported to Lebanon through the Jordanian territories in 2009, but it stopped in 2011 after the January 25, 2011 uprising.