Ousted top Fatah official Ahmed Korei said today that elections to the executive body of the main Palestinian party this week were "unsound".
Mr Korei, a former Palestinian prime minister and peace negotiator with Israel for years, levelled the charge a day after Fatah announced final results of voting for its Central Committee members at the movement's first congress in 20 years.
"From the outset, these elections did not have the minimum principles of transparency," Mr Korei told Reuters.
Mr Korei (72) was one of 10 veteran Central Committee members who sought re-election. Only four made it back into the executive body, which was supposed to have 18 elected members and four appointed members.
He said he had appealed to Fatah's electoral commission and the president of the congress for a review of the vote.
Fatah said its elections for the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council were "free, fair and transparent".
However, Fatah has bent its own rules to ensure that another Fatah veteran, Tayyeb Abdel-Rahim, got a seat on the executive, critics charged.
He had been beaten by two votes but after a recount Fatah said he ranked co-equal with the 18th member on the winners' list and would duly take his place, while the number of appointed members would be reduced by one to three.
Among irregularities he noted were 10 ballot boxes for the Central Committee instead of one; a 24-hour delay in announcing the result; many ballots in the same handwriting; and armed security men present while the count was going on.
"There is a great degree of grumbling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," Korei said. "But I do not raise questions about those who won."
He said he expected more challenges to the results of the parliament of the secular party, the Revolutionary Council, that are due to be announced on Friday. "There will be no trust in the results," he said.
Senior Fatah members believe the election of members from the movement's younger generation will put the party in a better position to seek a crucial reconciliation with its rival, the Islamist group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip, restoring some unity to the divided Palestinian nationalist cause.
Reuters