No Surprise: Fatah Postpones Elections

It's no surprise, because one would expect no less when Abbas's term ended in January 2009.

Here's the story:

Palestinian local elections scheduled to be held in the West Bank on July 17 have been postponed indefinitely, officials said on Thursday. Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the Gaza Strip from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, had already said they would boycott the vote.

The Palestinian Authority said the vote was delayed so as not to compromise efforts to reconcile with Hamas, but, as Ynet reported earlier in the week, the delay is due to internal disagreement and division within Abbas' Fatah faction.

Fatah hasn’t been able to reach an agreement over the candidates for many of the municipalities and councils.
The Palestinian Central Committee failed in its efforts to reconcile the camps, and some fear Fatah's image might significantly be jeopardized over the internal rift.

Right, because we all know what an impressive image Fatah has now--if you like corruption and incompetence.

And Abbas is the guy that Obama is gushing over.
So much for American foreign policy.

Oh by the way, the Gaza elections are overdue too:

Under the leadership of President Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority’s Cabinet called in 2004 local elections, to be held by the Ministry of Local Government1 (MoLG) in three2 (3) stages throughout 2005. Because of the operational and political challenges, local elections were held in four (4) stages on six (6) different dates3 and were never finalized; elections in over 100 councils were postponed indefinitely.

The term of Palestinian local councils is limited to four (4) years, and because the elections were held on different dates, the terms of local councils did not expire at the same time. Nevertheless, since the law provides the possibility of scheduling elections earlier than the expiration of the four (4) year term, but not later than one (1) month after the expiration, the local elections should have been conducted by January 23, 2009.

Acknowledging the expiration of the local councils’ term, the Cabinet changed the status of all of the councils into “caretaker councils4”. In February 2010, the Cabinet called for local elections in the West Bank and Gaza for 17 July 2010.

Caretaker government? More like an undertaker government.

Technorati Tag: Abbas and Fatah.