Palestine future after the legislative elections [Archives:2006/922/Opinion]

It has really been the first frees and decent elections held I the Arab homeland, that is how western media described the Palestinian elections and asked the western politicians to conduct dialogue with Hamas and other Palestinian organizations.

The Palestinian authority has decomposed because of the plague of corruption. This was what happened in Egypt and would happen in a number of other Arab capitals.

I do not want to talk about the dilemma nor about the present and the future, I just want to talk about peoples' rights to choice, and that was what happened in Palestine. The voters' turnout was estimated at more than 77%. They refused corruption and concessions and selected the resistance.

The results of elections were surprising, even the leaders of Hamas had not dreamt of this sweeping victory as the won 76 seats. Thus the elections that were not subject to fraud and voters were not exposed to prevention from casing their votes, came to reflect reality and emphasize that people selections are correct.

For this reason I believe that the Palestinian people deserve that every Arab citizen should bow his head in salutation with admiration and appreciation. The latest Palestinian elections, not just the results they ended with, single out two very important clear-cut indications.

First of all they reveal the extent of maturity attained by the Palestinian people, and the second is the extent of resolution and insistence they entertain.

The turnout in the elections was very high despite of the troubled security circumstances and harshness of the Israeli occupation and disrespect for all human rights and civilized values, and taking into consideration that this proportion did not have any falsification or change of the fact.

Variables also change. Therefore the Palestinian authority had accepted the presence of foreign observers of more than one thousand Arab and non-Arab observers. The authority accepted all those because it had nothing to hide and did not think of declaring but the truth.

Those who fear the presence of foreign observers or overseers under pretext of the sovereignty of the state, they ridicule themselves and do not laugh at others. They rather hide the intention of manipulating fraudulently the will of the people and do not want to have the world a witness on their fraud. The Palestinian people, however, proved to bigger than all that.

A question may force itself here and we must give an answer to it however hard it may be. Why he Palestinian people, despite the difficult circumstances around them, are the only Arab people who have such a high proportion turnout in the elections and welcome observers and none has said they have committed violations? Why do the Palestinian people live an experience heralding the birth of a genuine democratic state, despite the very severe circumstances surrounding them?

Why does not the ruling party study this experience? The experiment also deserves good contemplation and preparation by the opposition parties to take part in the upcoming local and presidential elections so that to be an inlet to the coming parliamentary elections.

Prof. Abdulaziz Al-Tarb is an economist and a professor in Political Science and an expert in administrative development. He is the head of a number of professional associations, such as the Arab Group for Investment and Development.
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