UN-Truth

Palestinian Presidential and Legislative Council Elections are on hold — but local and municipal elections will be held in the West Bank on 17 July, it was announced today.

It must be because the elections for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) went so well this past Friday and Saturday…

(Apparently, one reason may be that there are no journalists with an open affiliation with Hamas who are members of the PJS, though there may be a few silent sympathizers … A good number of the journalists who are members of the PJS are affiliated with the other Palestinian “factions”, and there are also independents. In any case, the main reason that the elections went ahead, according to one journalist, was the intense desire for a change. A secondary reason, he said, was the interest and excitement created by the fact that new posts of responsibility would become available.)

The decision to declare the local and municipal elections was made by the Palestinian cabinet of ministers working with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is in Japan).

The Associated Press reported this evening that “Abbas’ rivals in Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, signaled they will not participate in the July 17 election, virtually guaranteeing that Fatah will reclaim key cities where Hamas won in the last round of local elections five years ago. But a Hamas boycott would also likely exclude Gaza from the voting and diminish the potential of the election to compare the present strengths of the bitter rivals … Fatah took a drubbing from Hamas in parliamentary elections in 2006, largely because voters wanted to punish Fatah for years of corruption, arrogance and mismanagement. The Abbas government decided Monday that elections will be held in dozens of West Bank communities with more than 5,000 residents. The voting will take place in stages, with the first towns voting July 17, said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Mohammed Ishtayeh. ‘It will be open to any person who wants to participate, including (those from) Hamas’, Ishtayeh said. However, Hamas signaled it would not field candidates because of a crackdown on the movement in the West Bank. Since the Gaza takeover, Abbas’ security forces have arrested hundreds of Hamas activists, closed Hamas charities and sent home Hamas mayors”… This AP story can be read in full here.

The AP story added that “voting patterns in local elections differ from those in general elections. Clan interests often supersede faction loyalty”.

Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Palestine & Palestinians