The head of the Lebanese Democratic Party, Talal Arslan, lost a seat he has held for 30 years to an opposition candidate in the parliamentary elections.
Talal Arslan is a major Druze ally of both Hezbollah and the Syrian government. Arslan was elected as a member of Parliament in 1992 and has been re-elected four times since then.
He has simultaneously served as a minister in six governments in different portfolios since the 1990s.
Arslan lost his seat to the new delegate, Mark Daou, who is the owner of an advertising company and a professor of media studies. Preliminary results showed that Daou’s “Unity for Change” list won two more seats, according to the campaign manager, a great achievement for the independents.
