Best wishes,
Bryan
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Fatah, a Vehicle to Democracy or an Obstacle
Analysis-Ghassan Andoni-IMEMC, December 6, 2004, 21:53
The filed candidacy of Fatah’s jailed leader Marwan Barghouthi for PA chairmanship against Fatah’s central committee decision to nominate PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas’s decision to boycott elections, turned the presidential elections into an internal Fatah competition.
All other candidates for PA chairmanship are either independent or representatives of small political factions and parties.
Fatah affiliates believe that the movement, which took the leading rule in the Palestinian modern revolution for 40 years, can’t be defined as a political faction. To them, Fatah is the “Palestinian people” movement, the holder of the “Palestinian Dream”
Different from other political movements or parties, Fatah refrained from adopting ideological stands, and stood as a national liberation movement open to different streams of thoughts and ideologies.
Palestinian nationalists, Pan Arab nationalists, socialists, Islamists and others coexist inside the complicated fabric of Fatah movement.
A charismatic leader like late President Yasser Arfat was indeed needed to keep this fabric intact.
Inside both the Palestinian Liberation Organization and, later on, within the Palestinian Authority, Fatah accepted pluralism, but only allowing other factions a symbolic representation.
Being the largest, wealthiest, and most effective Palestinian movement, Fatah was never open to a real power sharing and always insisted, and was able to achieve, a partnership quota that allowed Fatah full unilateral control.
The Palestinian Authority was established as a Fatah affiliated authority. Both the security and civil branches were loyal to Fatah. Even the elected legislative council ended up being dominated by Fatah as most other factions boycotted the elections.
The opposition groups are facing a serious dilemma with the presidential elections. How would it be possible for an elected opposition president to run an authority loyal to his opponent?
In reality, the PA was established on the one party rule model, which dominated the Arab countries for the past century. Egypt, Syria, and the former Iraqi regime are only examples; an authority that accepts pluralism, but refuses to share power and does not allow for a peaceful transfer of authority.
This is the main reason to why all opposition groups requested running legislative and local elections parallel to the presidential one. The established system allows for parliamentarian opposition but not the transfer of executive power.
Under such conditions, and accepting the fact that Fatah is more than a political party, but rather a national coalition, Fatah should open its internal competition to the people’s judgment. It is more democratic to allow for more than one Fatah candidate to run for president. It is puzzling to why Fatah’s old guards were so much offended by the nomination of Marwan Barghouthi. It would have been to the benefit of both Fatah and democracy to allow Barghouthi to compete as a second Fatah candidate rather than as an independent one.