Municipal: in the occupied West Bank, a voting day without much motivation
Audio 01:28
A Palestinian voting in the West Bank for municipal elections in a village, this Saturday, December 11, 2021 © Majdi Mohammed / AP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Palestinians vote for municipal elections.
This first part of the vote is only held in 154 of the 376 villages in the West Bank, as no one has declared themselves in 60 localities and major Palestinian cities will vote in March.
The electoral stake is very low and the Palestinians consider this election futile.
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With our correspondent in the Palestinian Territories,
Alice Froussard
The queue to slip your ballot into the ballot box is not very long in Qusra, a village east of Nablus.
Here, five lists compete to conquer the town hall.
But for these Palestinian municipal elections, the turnout is very low: 30% at midday, according to the central election committee.
It's a sign of Palestinians' weariness with aging institutions and a Palestinian Authority that is no longer representative of the population, says Ayman, a voter.
“
We need a decision made to correct the mistakes that have been made by the current government.
And then we can organize real elections again.
"
Legislative postponed to an indefinite date
Because with a vote only in the villages, in the absence of Hamas and with mostly independent lists, the stakes are low.
Electoral competition is almost zero.
But this lack of interest mainly comes from the current climate, believes Ghassan Khatib, political scientist: “
The political situation - internally - is at an impasse.
Because it does not know how to renew itself, and above all, because there are no elections.
There are no elections between parties, nor within institutions: not in the executive committee, in the PLO, in the Palestinian Authority, and not in political parties either.
"
In April, specifying that the ballot could not be guaranteed in Jerusalem,
President Mahmoud Abbas
postponed indefinitely the legislative and presidential elections which were to take place in May.
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See also: International report - Palestinian Territories: start of municipal elections in the West Bank
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