MIDDLE EAST: Mr Mahmoud Abbas declared he had won a Palestinian presidential election last night and dedicated his victory to Yasser Arafat, the iconic leader he is replacing. Michael Jansen reports from Jerusalem
Exit polls from three leading Palestinian political research institutes put his victory at between 66.2 and 70.5 per cent of the votes.
"We offer this victory to the soul of the brother martyr Yasser Arafat and to all Palestinians ...," Mr Abbas told a jubilant rally of his Fatah nationalist party in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
His nearest rival, Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and legislator, was shown to have won between 18 and 24 per cent.
Voter turnout was at least 66 per cent of registered voters, the Central Elections Commission said. The official results will be known today.
Voting was extended by two hours to increase participation, which was slow and sluggish in most areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Mr Abbas, who succeeded the late Yasser Arafat as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, requested the extension.
Mr Abbas needs to not only win by a convincing margin but also to secure a large enough percentage of the vote to have a strong popular mandate. This would enable him to negotiate with Israel, clamp down on dissident militants and reform the administration. The Palestinian Authority was also hoping for a large turnout because it would strengthen its democratic credentials and demonstrate to the world that Israel is not, as it claims, the sole practitioner of democracy in the Middle East.
Election observers contacted by The Irish Times said they found ballot boxes in areas they covered were about half full, indicating "moderate" participation of the nearly 1.8 million eligible voters. In all but a few places, voting was well ordered and smooth and there were no delays. The monitors also said voters were generally not prevented by Israeli checkpoints from reaching polling stations by the initial deadline of 7 p.m.
There were, however, several problems. In East Jerusalem, there was considerable confusion over who could and who could not vote at post offices within the city limits. A great deal of time was lost by those permitted to cast ballots in the city to find out where they should go, reducing the already minimal participation of Palestinian Jerusalemites.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians living in an enclave in an Israeli settlement were prevented from reaching the polls for several hours. In the southern sector of the Strip, Hamas activists opposed to participation in the election stopped voters from accessing polling stations.
In the West Bank, five gunmen briefly entered a polling area, protesting that they had been denied the vote, and in the town of Kalandia, north of Jerusalem, armed elements from the mainstream Fatah movement stationed themselves in polling stations.