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Elections Monitoring Unit For Immediate Release: Land and Water Establishment 11 January, 1996 Tel: (972) (2) 824559/812364 Fax: (972) (2) 811072 email: lawe@netvision.net.il
PRESSURE TACTICS CONTINUE AGAINST CANDIDATES
Intimidation Used in Salfit District
Pressure is mounting against Mr. Hamis el Hamed, People's Party candidate in the Salfit District. Other candidates in this district are facing direct pressure from Mr. Arafat to pull out of the race to maximise the chances for election of Fatah candidates.
Mr. el Hamed has increasingly felt the intimidation tactics employed against him by the Palestinian Authority. Most seriously Mr. Thamin Badah, People's Party Campaign Manager of Mr. el Hamed, was arrested on 8 January and remains without charge in administrative detention in Jericho. Although Mr. Badah was arrested at the campaign's headquarters, the Palestinian Mukhabarat made no attempt to contact Mr. el Hamed or to provide any explanation as to the arrest, despite repeated attempts to obtain information.
The Mukhabarat has begun following the cars used by Mr. el Hamed's campaign team. This continual presence of the Authority's security forces serves to intimidate his campaign workers.
Campaign materials of Mr. el Hamed, including pictures, have been defaced or removed from the official posting sites in his district. Of the eleven candidates in his area, his materials are the only ones that have been removed or damaged. Mr. el Hamed maintains that this comprises a clear example of harassment, and charges Fatah supporters with this damage.
Mr. Arafat has also begun applying direct pressure on independent candidates in the area in order to limit opposition to Fatah candidate Ahmed el Deeq. For example Abdel Jalil Saleh, formerly Fatah but running as an independent, recently ran an ad in the Haya Jdide newspaper stating that Mr. Arafat had personally requested that he pull out of the race in order to help Mr. el Deeq. In retracting his candidacy, Mr. Saleh said he hoped his voters would vote instead for Mr. el Deeq. In addition, a high-ranking PA official came to the offices of Samir Aselkhi, independent candidate from Az'zawiyye village, and urged him to step down as a candidate in order to strengthen the campaign of Ahmed el Deeq. Mr. Aselkhi did so. Interestingly, Mr. el Deeq is the son-in-law of Umm Jihad, former Minister of Social Affairs for the Palestinian Authority and currently running in the elections for Fatah in Gaza.
These tactics of pressure, intimidation, and purposeful attempts to limit opposition not only violate the electoral law that Mr. Arafat passed and arbitrarily modified himself, but also seriously undermine the "democratic" environment under which these elections must take place.
Land and Water Establishment is a non-governmental organisation, dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. The Elections Monitoring Unit was recently instituted in order to ensure fairness in the upcoming elections.