BEIRUT, May 29: Candidates led by the son of assassinated premier Rafik al Hariri won all the seats in Beirut in Lebanon’s general election on Sunday. “The count is nearly over and it’s a landslide for Hariri’s list,” said the source. Saad al Hariri’s anti-Syrian bloc had already won nine of the capital’s 19 seats in the 128-member parliament before the vote because they were not contested. The source said candidates on Mr Hariri’s list had taken all 10 undecided seats.

“This victory is for Rafik al Hariri. Today Beirut showed its loyalty to Rafik al Hariri,” Saad Hariri, 35, told a jubilant crowd celebrating outside his villa in the capital. “Today is a victory for democracy... freedom and sovereignty,” he said to chanting supporters.

Saad Hariri is a billionaire businessman thrust into politics by the Feb 14 killing of his father, who as prime minister was the symbol of Lebanon’s reconstruction drive. But voters denied Mr Hariri the high turnout he sought in the first polls in three decades with no Syrian troops in Lebanon. Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa put the turnout at 28 per cent.

The capital had a 34 per cent turnout in 2000, when Hariri’s father, then cooperating with Syria, also swept the board. Beirut was the first region to go to the polls. Other regions vote over the next three Sundays.

U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen congratulated Lebanon for conducting the first round of polling successfully. “These elections ... represent a significant step for the Lebanese people in their quest for recovering their full political independence and sovereignty,” he said in a statement.

Only a handful of pro-Syrian leftists and Muslim militants were competing with Mr Hariri’s Future bloc in mainly Sunni Muslim Beirut.—Reuters