BEIRUT, May 29 -- Outside a Starbucks cafe in a Christian section of Beirut, a man removed his Yankees cap to show a battle scar -- received, he said, when he was a 14-year-old carrying a Kalashnikov in Lebanon's civil war. Now 30, the man, who identified himself only as Ramy, expresses little faith in any of the politicians vying for leadership of this religiously fractured society.
"Why vote? Why vote for someone whom I don't believe?" asked Ramy, who said he feared police harassment if he gave his full name.
As Lebanese in Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods went to the polls Sunday, Ramy sat it out. He smoked Marlboros, talked of a new civil war and watched rival Christian factions shout slogans across a crowded square, bristling with soldiers, in Beirut's fashionable Ashrafieh neighborhood.
The map of election day emotions almost exactly mirrored the division of this religiously atomized city into Christian and Muslim enclaves.
Sunni Muslims, buoyed by their almost certain sweep of the Beirut parliamentary seats, voted in large numbers, and turned their polling places into festive spectacles. Overall turnout was low, 28 percent by the government's estimate. Shiite Muslims were cautious and expressed hope that the new government would tend to the problems of unemployment and poverty. And many Christians, angry about a 2000 election law that limits their influence in national parliamentary elections, stayed home.
"They're watching TV," Ramy said.
At the Verdun Public School in a wealthy and mostly Sunni neighborhood, voters divided up by gender and religion. Tamam Jaber Mir, 45, emerged from a room reserved for Sunni women married to Sunni men, and called the vote the most important of her life.
"Because of the assassination of Hariri and the Syrian withdrawal, we are safer now," she said, referring to two events in the last four months that many thought might remake Lebanon's political life. Elated and surprised by a rare moment of national unity and inspired by widely shared disgust with the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri on Feb. 14, many Lebanese hoped a strong, unifying leader would emerge from the current round of elections, which continue by region until June 19.
For Sunnis, that leader is already clear: Saad Hariri, Rafiq Hariri's son, a charismatic but politically untested 35-year-old businessman.
"He is coming to continue on the path, Saadeddine, the son of the martyr," a voice sang from stereo speakers across the road from the Verdun school polling site. The song, one of dozens of political anthems composed since Rafiq Hariri's death, was set to a pop electronic version of the Lebanese national dance, the Dabke.
In Beirut, the first region to vote, there was little drama about the outcome. Pre-election horse-trading and backroom alliances meant that nine of the 19 seats were uncontested, and there was little real opposition to Hariri and his allies for control of the rest. Outside polling stations, voters were handed small squares of paper with Hariri's political list written on them, making voting as easy as stuffing the pre-printed ballots into brown envelopes ready for the ballot box.
For Dib Tajrine, 58, the lack of real political choice and the reemergence of a familiar cast of sectarian leaders made him cynical about the euphoric feelings of Lebanese solidarity many felt during massive demonstrations in March.
Voters Cast Ballots in Lebanese Capital 
