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Gunmen disrupt Fatah primaries

The ruling Fatah movement wrangled yesterday over whether to press ahead with voting in primaries, after gunmen disrupted elections in Gaza and activists complained of irregularities.

Some Fatah officials said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered voting suspended. However, others said the directive came from Fatah activists who opposed the primaries from the start and have little authority. Abbas was abroad and could not immediately be reached for any comment.

Fatah activists said they would not be deterred and go ahead with primaries as planned -- yesterday in Jerusalem and on Friday in the West Bank city of Hebron. Several other West Bank districts held primaries last week.

"I received nothing [from Abbas]," said Ahmed Ghneim, organizer of the Hebron vote. "We are preparing for the election in Hebron on Friday and nothing will stop us."

On Monday, Fatah canceled its Gaza primary after gunmen attacked polling stations, embarrassing Abbas, who has been unable to restore order in the coastal strip -- or even his own party -- as he faces a stiff electoral challenge from the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Democratic reform is considered crucial to removing the taint of corruption from Fatah, ahead of January parliamentary elections. Many young Fatah activists, long frozen out of power by entrenched party leaders, insisted that transparent primaries determine the party's legislative slate rather than secret back-room negotiations.

But disorder and violence upset the voting and then led to its cancellation.

At some of the roughly 190 Fatah polling stations, many voters found that their names were not on the registration lists or that they had been mistakenly registered at the wrong station. Fatah officials said it was their first experience holding a primary, and they only had a short amount of time to compile lists of the 200,000 eligible voters in Gaza.

Some militants lost patience.

In one station in a village in eastern Khan Younis, a group of about 15 Fatah gunmen, angry at not finding their names on the list, began shooting in the air, witnesses said. Officials then closed the station for about 45 minutes. Polling stations in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Deir el-Balah were also closed after similar incidents.

Fatah gunmen barged into a polling station in the Sheik Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, took its 16 ballot boxes into a yard, poured gasoline over several of them and set them on fire, witnesses said.

Fatah officials held an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon and decided to cancel the primary, nullifying the votes already cast, according to a statement from the party.

The primary would have to be rescheduled, possibly for Friday, Fatah spokesman Deab Allouh said, adding that the party's candidates would have to be chosen by Dec. 3. It was unclear how officials could ensure a new round of voting would be any smoother than Monday's.
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