The Election Process "Built on Clientelism"

·       (ابدا بوجهة نظري)..... The legislative elections in Palestine, scheduled to be held in May – May of the current year – 2021 –, acquire great importance, since the Israeli military occupation has occupied all of Palestine for decades, and the political, economic and social repercussions...the "المتاتيه" resulting from this occupation...and among them are the factors of division within the Palestinian arena, which most Palestinian factions and parties, and the community civic and civil entities such as unions, associations and bodies in the West Bank and Gaza and abroad, have been unable to put an end to this crisis, which has ravaged the entire Palestinian cause for a decade and a half... while the reasons are multiple and interrelated...they have exhausted the Palestinians, weakened their capabilities to get rid of the Israeli occupation..., and weakened the features of their available democracy...not to mention regional and international reasons that have their calculations on this issue...there is no room to elaborate on them in this post...matters were made more complicated by the fact that holding Palestinian elections in all their sectors was delayed greatly...beyond the due dates of their constitutional cycle...and we breathed a sigh of relief, finally, with the issuance of the presidential decrees to hold the elections, beginning with the legislative elections...and regardless of the details of the procedures and methods for implementing them...and their lack of clarity to the public, especially regarding candidacy eligibility, and the criteria that those qualified to vote must observe....we hope that good faith will be the language of this political stage...and that political prudence, and the pursuit of the public interest, will be preserved as the first priority in hearts and minds from which there is no deviation.!

·       We, for our part, encourage all Palestinian citizens in the areas targeted by the decrees to engage in this electoral process, to push matters toward the results we seek for the sake of change!...we must not forget that ending the Israeli occupation is the primary heading and the great concern that the new members of the next Legislative Council must be up to the responsibility...for membership in legislative councils, especially in Palestine, must truly be representative, and must not be a barter of services in exchange for voters’ votes..!...which will not create the political alternative within this obstructive conception..!

·       The weakness of the structure and organizational frameworks of some opposition political parties, both ideological and organizational, and some factions in the arena, and the weakness of the unions and other civil society bodies.....and the atrophy of their membership base...and the marginality of their activities, has led and continues to lead to their inability to develop the vessels for producing deputies and candidates..!!

-        We include some excerpts that appeared in books and research regarding legislative elections in the Arab world, and we chose the period of the 2000 legislative elections in Egypt...

-        Knut al-Sharabi, in his book "The New Patriarchal Order," stated that Arabs’ attachment to primary affiliation networks (the family, the tribe, the village, the neighborhood, the local community, the region) is one of the major obstacles that hinder or prevent (political modernization), ...because this attachment is incompatible with many of the fundamental elements that constitute modern democracy, as it is incompatible with the existence of the free individual who is responsible for his choices and opinions, especially at the political level..the relationship among members of these primary groups is also characterized by submission, dependence and clientelism, in contrast to modern democratic rules, which are based on equality: where each individual has one vote...!

-        The particularism that traditional and new solidarities build tends to reduce individuals’ affiliation with other groupings, such as political parties, unions and associations, which are based on free affiliation and horizontal relations, rather than on vertical relations!

-        Candidacy for the elections at that time (in 2000) was conditioned on membership in the single party, and given the prevailing authoritarian political culture, the electoral system and its mechanisms turned into a process of (producing and reproducing the ruling elite)..!

-        Access to political positions, in a given geographic space...even within democracy, and although it may be theoretically available to all who meet the conditions specified by law....., in practice...it is limited to names appearing on the lists, and these are the (eligible to be elected), and the notion of eligibility is relationally linked to the candidates’ belonging, enjoying trust and legitimacy, to local political networks, where strong family ties and strategies of intermarriage intertwine, and within these networks legitimacies and sites of eligibility are transferred and constructed, and naturally these networks do not know any rigidity, but rather they update and renew themselves, especially at election times....!

-        As stated in one passage in readable books on the subject of elections: "Major political changes do not come about through ballot boxes," and "Arab elections, whether presidential or legislative, have turned into rigged elections, and the parliament has become a closed club for talking about the genius of the king or the president"...in the writer’s words.

-        The primary concern of candidates and their supporters must be respect for the election laws and the constitution, not winning these elections.!

-        It was also said in that period about the 2000 legislative elections in Egypt, which the author claims represent the Arab countries in general, that: "Fraud is closely linked to competition," and that "fraud is a constitutive element of the political market." And "the first concerned with this market are the candidates and their clients, that is, their supporters"...so the electoral process "is built on clientelism"...!

Date: 13-2-2021