Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese live in Canada, but they want to express their dissatisfaction with Lebanon’s political elite, and they will not accept the alternative of depriving them from their right to vote in the parliamentary elections scheduled for the spring of 2020.

Wassim Sreis: We have citizenship in Canada, thus we have the right to vote. What makes us think we don’t want to vote in Lebanon? No one can take away our freedom to live in our own nation, and no one can take away our right to express ourselves.

Many of the Lebanese who have settled here blame Lebanon’s political establishment for their exodus and are looking for ways to influence change in their homeland.

The question of expatriate voting has yet to be settled, but it is clear that a significant number of Lebanese living abroad will not accept being denied their constitutional right, especially because they are paying the price in exile for the political class’s triumphs in Lebanon.