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Palestinian elections / PA candidate demands campaign funding investigation
Bassam al-Salhi, the nominee of the Palestinian People's Party (formerly the Communist party) for chairman of the Palestinian Authority, held a press conference Monday where he attacked Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, an independent candidate in this Sunday's vote, who until two years ago was a member of the same party. Al-Salhi demanded that the PA Central Election Committee investigate Barghouti's funding sources.
Al-Salhi said that Barghouti is spending vast sums and that there should be limits on campaign spending. He also demanded that the campaign include televised debates "so the voter can make a rational decision."
The Palestinian left is split. Al-Salhi and Democratic Front candidate Taisir Khaled woke up 10 days ago when the official campaign was launched, and discovered that the campaign was a two-headed one. On the one side was PLO chair Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who the polls predict will win with 55-65 percent of the vote, and on the other Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, expected to get 15-22 percent, having outflanked the left wing, including the People's Party, the Popular Front and the Democratic Front.
On the streets near Al-Salhi's campaign offices in El-Bireh he can see thousands of images of Abu Mazen and Barghouti on every corner. Hundreds of activists from the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, which Barghouti heads, have enlisted in the campaign. The organization is one of the largest aid agencies in the territories, with a multimillion dollar budget.
Al-Salhi heads a similar organization, the People's Party agricultural aid assistance committee, but it is still difficult for him watch Barghouti on local TV receiving the blessing of 87-year-old Khaider Abed al-Shafi, a left-wing patriarch, and thus challenge Fatah's hegemony.
Barghouti's platform and campaign slogans are not substantially different from Abu Mazen's, but Barghouti is trying to paint himself as a young candidate with no ties to the pervasive corruption in Fatah and the PA. His campaign material does not have a single reference to communism.
Barghouti has good relations with the foreign and Arab press, and can hold his own in the media against Abu Mazen. But Abu Mazen's campaign is much more than a media campaign. All the polls predict he will win big. The international community and the Arab world have embraced him.
Abu Mazen kicked off his campaign with visits to the Arab countries directly tied to the conflicts in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. His campaign directors are focusing on two goals: Increasing voter turnout to provide maximum legitimacy for his election, and building his image as a statesman controls all the components of the Palestinian Authority.
According to the PA election law, Abu Mazen needs a simple majority to win the election. He has been featured in all the local media, and local TV stations are showing an eight-minute clip describing his activity through the years and describing his platform.
"Oslo" is never mentioned once. The focus is on the need to unite behind a single leader.
Abu Mazen's most important asset is the Palestinian Authority itself. Wherever he goes hundreds of Palestinian police join Fatah activists in the street. Some PA offices let workers off from work to hang street posters. School children are brought to election rallies.
The business sector has also enlisted in Abu Mazen's campaign, for example the PalTel phone monopoly, which has bought huge ads calling on people to vote. Palestinian sources say the Barghouti and Abu Mazen campaigns have spent more than $200,000 each, and that the other five candidates have invested between $100,000 and $130,000.
Tens of thousands of dollars have been paid to PA-controlled newspapers to cover the campaign, and the candidates' pictures appear by rotation on the front pages. In the past few days, anonymously written "news" stories have been published in the insides pages of the papers. The stories have actually been written by the various campaign headquarters. Each candidate seems to have his own space in the layout of the daily papers, an arrangement that has rarely changed during the campaign.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/523089.html
The Palestinian left is split. Al-Salhi and Democratic Front candidate Taisir Khaled woke up 10 days ago when the official campaign was launched, and discovered that the campaign was a two-headed one. On the one side was PLO chair Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who the polls predict will win with 55-65 percent of the vote, and on the other Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, expected to get 15-22 percent, having outflanked the left wing, including the People's Party, the Popular Front and the Democratic Front.
On the streets near Al-Salhi's campaign offices in El-Bireh he can see thousands of images of Abu Mazen and Barghouti on every corner. Hundreds of activists from the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, which Barghouti heads, have enlisted in the campaign. The organization is one of the largest aid agencies in the territories, with a multimillion dollar budget.
Al-Salhi heads a similar organization, the People's Party agricultural aid assistance committee, but it is still difficult for him watch Barghouti on local TV receiving the blessing of 87-year-old Khaider Abed al-Shafi, a left-wing patriarch, and thus challenge Fatah's hegemony.
Barghouti's platform and campaign slogans are not substantially different from Abu Mazen's, but Barghouti is trying to paint himself as a young candidate with no ties to the pervasive corruption in Fatah and the PA. His campaign material does not have a single reference to communism.
Barghouti has good relations with the foreign and Arab press, and can hold his own in the media against Abu Mazen. But Abu Mazen's campaign is much more than a media campaign. All the polls predict he will win big. The international community and the Arab world have embraced him.
Abu Mazen kicked off his campaign with visits to the Arab countries directly tied to the conflicts in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. His campaign directors are focusing on two goals: Increasing voter turnout to provide maximum legitimacy for his election, and building his image as a statesman controls all the components of the Palestinian Authority.
According to the PA election law, Abu Mazen needs a simple majority to win the election. He has been featured in all the local media, and local TV stations are showing an eight-minute clip describing his activity through the years and describing his platform.
"Oslo" is never mentioned once. The focus is on the need to unite behind a single leader.
Abu Mazen's most important asset is the Palestinian Authority itself. Wherever he goes hundreds of Palestinian police join Fatah activists in the street. Some PA offices let workers off from work to hang street posters. School children are brought to election rallies.
The business sector has also enlisted in Abu Mazen's campaign, for example the PalTel phone monopoly, which has bought huge ads calling on people to vote. Palestinian sources say the Barghouti and Abu Mazen campaigns have spent more than $200,000 each, and that the other five candidates have invested between $100,000 and $130,000.
Tens of thousands of dollars have been paid to PA-controlled newspapers to cover the campaign, and the candidates' pictures appear by rotation on the front pages. In the past few days, anonymously written "news" stories have been published in the insides pages of the papers. The stories have actually been written by the various campaign headquarters. Each candidate seems to have his own space in the layout of the daily papers, an arrangement that has rarely changed during the campaign.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/523089.html
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From the Israeli government's perspective, Abbas's comments at his public appearances are harsh and sometimes strike too hard. He emphasizes the issue of Jerusalem and refugee rights, calls for prisoner release, and even praises shahids (martyrs).
In the Palestinian eyes, the picture is different, even opposite. Palestinian caricaturist Umiya Juha of the PA mouthpiece Al Hayyat Al Jedida last week drew three cartoons presenting Abbas in the eye of the onlooker. In the first, in Israeli eyes, Abbas looks like a miserable dwarf next to the huge figure of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In the second, he is seen through the eyes of Arab rulers, and he is carrying a sign announcing he was chosen by a 99.999 percent majority and a spiked club. In the eyes of some of the Palestinian public, he is seen as a dead-ringer for Arafat, wearing a black and white kaffiyeh. In the fourth drawing, the most important, Juha explains who the real Abbas is - and she draws him as an old grandmother knitting from colored balls of yarn.
No one would have dared present Arafat that way. But it appears this is really Abbas' image in the Palestinian street. The impression from everything written and said about him in the Palestinian public is that he's a good man, affable and a compromiser.
An East Jerusalem journalist who saw a photo of Abbas with the caption "Welcome the Hero" reported that his family members simply burst out laughing. Abbas a hero? Nonetheless, they will elect him. Why? "Because the whole world wants him; America, the Arab countries, Europe, Israel - you want him, you can have him, and we'll see what happens," he says.
This is the prevalent feeling in the West Bank and Gaza, and it allows only one clear conclusion: Abbas is considered an acceptable leader, despite appearing lenient (in spite of a few harsh words here and there) due to comments he continues to make against the use of violence in the uprising. If the government of Israel doesn't manage to create dialogue with him and an agreement, there is no chance of an agreement with any other Palestinian leader. At least not in the foreseeable future.
This is reinforced by an examination of the comments and deeds by independent candidate Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. Barghouti reached what he called a "historic" agreement last week with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the leaders of which instructed members to support Barghouti. In theory, the Popular Front is the second-largest organization in the PLO. In practice, it is a small Marxist organization whose time has come and gone, and even its veteran leader George Habash calling on Damascus to support Barghouti will have little impact.
What is important is that the agreement between Barghouti and the Popular Front takes a stand against the Oslo Accords, against the road map, against the disengagement plan - in short, a clear refusal stance against everything.
Even those who disparage Mustafa Barghouti's power believe he can garner close to 20 percent of the vote. One of the rumors has it that at the last minute Hamas will instruct its people to vote Barghouti, and then he will narrow the gap. The picture evident from all this is that Barghouti's positions are the alternatives to Abbas's. In other words, if we don't succeed with Abbas, there won't be anyone else.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/523101.html