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 | | From: | AP | | Subject: | 46 Palestinian Election Officials Resign | | Date: | Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:10:19 EST |
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*Associated Press/AP Online
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Forty-six members of the Palestinian
election commission, including top managers, resigned Saturday,
saying they were pressured by Mahmoud Abbas' campaign and
intelligence officials to abruptly change voting procedures during
the Jan. 9 presidential poll.
Two senior members of the commission, Ammar Dwaik and Baha
al-Bakri, resigned early Saturday, and officials later said 44 more
members resigned. Six top election officials were among those who
resigned.
The resignations raised questions about Sunday's vote giving
Abbas an overwhelming victory with 62.3 percent, though the
officials who quit said the alleged irregularities did not
fundamentally affect the final vote tally.
"This proves that what happened is very serious and it
must not happen again," said Dwaik, the commission's deputy
chairman. "These pressures and threats lessened the degree of
the integrity of the election, even though overall it was free and
fair."
Abbas was sworn in as Palestinian Authority president
Saturday.
During the presidential election, polls were to have stayed
open for 12 hours until 7 p.m. However, several hours after polls
opened, turnout was light, a cause of concern for Abbas, who was the
front-runner but needed a decisive victory to win a mandate for
peace talks with Israel.
"We were visited by senior officials from Abu Mazen's
campaign, and we were pressured to change procedures on election
day," al-Bakri said. Abbas is widely known as Abu Mazen.
During the meeting, shots were fired at the panel's
headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Electoral officials
said they recognized at least one gunman as a member of Palestinian
intelligence services.
The commission eventually extended voting by two hours and
allowed voters to cast their ballots in any location, not just their
hometowns.
The change enabled thousands of security force members, most
of them Abbas supporters, to cast ballots near their posts rather
than travel back to their hometowns, some of them far away.
Dwaik and al-Bakri said Saturday those decisions were made
under pressure from Abbas' campaign, Fatah and the intelligence
service.
"I was personally threatened and pressured," Dwaik
said. "I am therefore announcing my resignation publicly, so
that everyone knows that in the upcoming legislative election, this
could happen again."
Al-Bakri said voting hours are extended only when there are
long lines at the polling stations.
"This was not the case on election day," he said.
"These (changes in) procedures had two goals: first to increase
the turnout and second to increase the percentage of Fatah
voters."
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