Palestinian court deals Hamas election blow
Reuters
Date: 05-17-05
GAZA (Reuters) - A Palestinian court on Tuesday threw out voting results in parts of Rafah, the southern Gaza town where the militant Islamic group swept to victory in a local election this month.
Thousands of supporters of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction took to the streets for late-night celebrations of a court ruling expected to increase friction between Hamas and the mainstream group.
Hamas, which won 12 Rafah council seats to three for Fatah in the May 5 ballot, shrugged off the political blow, saying it respected the court's decision and expected to do even better in a re-vote. A date for the re-vote has yet to be set.
The court cancelled the results in 51 of Rafah's 141 polling stations after finding irregularities in voter registration lists and ballot boxes, said Osama Abu Safiyah of the Supreme Committee for Local Election in Gaza.
He said nearly 40 percent of Gaza's 74,605 registered voters would be eligible to take part in new balloting.
Before the ruling was announced, Hamas accused Fatah leaders and the Palestinian Authority of pressuring the court to void the results.
"The attempt to hurt Hamas, distort its image and ... accuse it of corruption is a very grave issue," Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, told a news conference.
Hamada Mkhaimar, a lawyer who represented Fatah at the hearings, said the faction proved to the court that some votes were cast in the names of people who were abroad, dead or in jail.
Foreign observers said on election day they had found no major problems.
In the ballot, Fatah captured about 50 of 84 municipal councils in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Hamas won around 30 including larger towns such as Rafah and in Qalqilya, in the West Bank.
Hamas's strong showing was widely seen as an indicator of its political muscle ahead of its groundbreaking participation in a Palestinian parliamentary election scheduled for July.
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