Tripoli, the capital of North-Lebanon, serves as a key political battlefield for any Sunni Lebanese leader ambitioning a national destiny. This acute political competition is set in a landscape of socioeconomic marginalization of the former main port of Bilad al-Shams. In this socially depressed context since the end of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), clientelist informal institutions ensure the sustainability of their electorate by purveying welfare access (wasta) to their supporters. However, the settlement of thousands of Syrian refugees since 2011 increases the pressure on the sources of material dominance of Lebanese patrons. I will argue that the 2016 municipal electoral shock, where independents won the Municipal elections, was the political expression of a mechanism of social exclusion affecting a share of the Tripolitan lower Middle class who lost the patronage from Oligarchic leadership. This research paper is based on more than 24 elite-interviews and a locally generated survey on Lebanese and Syrian households collected over several months of fieldwork from summer 2018 to spring 2019. This article demonstrates that Oligarchs destabilised by the Syrian migratory pressure (most notably Saad Hariri) implement an exclusionary mechanism at the expense of the least valuable (social capital) of their protégés to ensure the sustainability of their leadership. Socially excluded individuals compete to secure patronage thus creating enough political space for the emergence of new independent leaders. The victory of Ashraf Rifi’s list of outsiders and civil society members in 2016 represents a unique win against the oligarchic leaders, at the latter’s own surprise. Nonetheless, I will demonstrate how the traditional bloc of oligarchic and traditional leaders successfully annihilated the independents’ municipal governance thanks to cartel alliances. The 2018 legislative elections confirms the temporary takeover of traditional sectarian politics… until the Tripolitan’s street expression of anger and discontent in October 2019. Finally, this article contributes to our understanding of the political consequences of the disruption of social order in municipalities subjected to unsustainable migratory pressures for their informal institutions of governance.