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Palestinian Electoral Commission To Meet Sunday Amidst Resistance Groups Protests
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Al Rantissi: “At that point, people will say leave your guns and go to the polls.” |
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Palestinian electoral commission will meet Sunday to consider "the first steps to take" towards holding elections, its secretary said, news agencies reported.
Mohammed Shtayyeh told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday that the nine-members of the commission would meet under the chairmanship of PLO number two Mahmud Abbas. Afterwards, they will meet with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.
Shtayyeh said Arafat is "the only one empowered to fix the dates of elections, while we deal with the technical aspects."
The speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmed Qorei, said in comments published Friday that municipal elections would be held later this year, while legislative polls would be set for early 2003. He said nothing about a presidential polls.
Arafat addressed growing calls for reforms to his administration -- viewed as corrupt and incompetent by ordinary Palestinians as well as foreign leaders -- by telling lawmakers Wednesday he would order new elections and make reforms.
However, both Arafat and his top aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, have said polls would not be held until Israeli troops withdrew to the positions they had held before the latest Palestinian uprising began.
"Elections will be held as rapidly as possible after the end to the occupation of our lands," Arafat said on Friday.
On Saturday, Abu Rudeina clarified that, saying, "the Israeli army must withdraw from the positions it has occupied since September 28, 2000 for free elections to take place without Israeli restrictions."
When Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority with more than 85 percent of the ballots in 1996, the presidential vote was held simultaneously with the legislative polls.
Meanwhile, many Palestinian politicians said that they feared that the elections which Arafat had called for aimed at suppressing the intifada and the resistance.
Speaking to IslamOnline, Dr. AbdulAziz al Rantisi, a Hamas leader, said that the elections is the latest method the U.S. and Israel are using to suppress the resistance, after it had failed to do that through various war plans such as the latest “Operation Defensive Shield”.
Al Rantissi added that talking about an election at this time is only a call for shriveling the resistance and to make it seem as though everything is over and stable. “At that point, people will say: leave your guns and go to the polls.”
He added that Hamas’s program in the future will not change as long as the occupation remains and that the situation now is not one for elections but one of resistance.
“Speaking about elections now will only benefit our enemy because we are still in the middle of a war that we haven’t finished yet. If we were asked to take part, Hamas’s response will be that the timing of the elections is not suitable,” he said.
Al Rantissi’s statement refutes what was announced by Saudi officials recently about Hamas vowing to halt its military operations in the coming phase.
Sheikh Abdullah Al Shami, a leader from the Islamic Jihad said that the political program for the movement in the coming phase will remain unchanged.
“Carrying out elections is what the movement has been calling for all along, but on the condition that it is in the benefit of the Palestinian people and not an Israeli or American initiative,” he said.
Al Shami said that there is nothing on the ground now that calls for a decision with regards to the elections, because this was only being talked about in the media and not within the Palestinian internal affairs.
With regards to taking part in the elections, he said that Al Jihad has asked ever since the Palestinian Authority came into power to hold municipal elections which was postponed at the time.
However, with regards to legislative and presidential elections Al Shami said that if the aim is to beautify the existing reality then it is not welcomed. “If it is to elect a Palestinian leadership, which will decide on the fate of the Palestinian people in continuing negotiations or resistance, then Al Jihad will be a part of it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Ali Faraj, a leader from the Fath movement in the west bank said that Fath has decided its political path in the coming phase, according to certain requirements and needs that were put forward to the political leadership.
These include revising the political folder in terms of defining the core of the conflict, asking the political leaders to maintain national standards which have been decided upon such as the formation of a Palestinian state and the right to return and to stress on the fact that the security dimension must not be the core of any future movement.
He said that the current international and regional movements focus on stressing the economic and security solution at the expense of a real political solution to the crisis.
“Reform is needed but it has to be a Palestinian decision and for national reasons and the timing must be suitable and constructive.”
Farag said that there is an American and Israeli goal to leak in groups of people who are not acceptable to the Palestinian people into the political and administrative establishments and to instigate a war between the various Palestinian resistance groups so that the person in charge is the Israeli side. The aim is to divert the Palestinians from the real issue at hand, which is the occupation.
Abdel Rahim Malouh, the assistant secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said that the American and Israeli administration are aiming to impose a political Palestinian system which will act out what ever they dictate and to restructure the Palestinian security forces.
“The Palestinian Authority has agreed to the American and international pressures”, he said adding that the arrest of Fouad Al Shobki, the military finance officer in the PA and Ahmad Saadat, the secretary general of the PFLP is proof.
Additional Reporting By Maha Abdul Hadi, IOL Palestine Correspondent
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