| From Khalid Amayreh in the occupied Palestine
Independent and professional journalists throughout Occupied Palestine are scoffing at the “journalists’ union elections” which took place on Saturday, 6 February, under the aegis of the Fatah organization, describing the event as a “farce” and “fraud.” The Fatah group, in coordination with some erstwhile leftist organizations, selected some 60 journalists who are supposed to form the new journalists union to replace the old moribund union headed by Naim Tubasi. Tubasi had been accused of corruption and monopolizing the union for his own personal expediency. He denies the charges, arguing that his foes within Fatah were only trying to use the union as a bridge for normalization with Israel. The new elections are widely considered an internal PLO affair as hundreds of independent and professional journalists in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip didn’t participate. “The election was a joke, the results were a foregone conclusion,” said Yusuf, a radio journalist from the Hebron region. He adds “I wouldn’t want to offend language by calling this farce an election. True elections must be open to all journalists, irrespective of their ideological orientations. This so-called election reminds me of union elections under the old communist regimes in Eastern Europe where everything was concocted by the Communist party.” Another journalist, Fathi Sabbah, described the process as “illegitimate and illegal.” “There is no doubt that the aim of this election had nothing to do with efforts to reform the journalists’ union. The process was a fraud from A to Z and the main purpose of the elections was to create a union with a form but without a substance in order to be manipulated and used by Fatah for political and factional considerations. “They just want a union at their beck and call, this is the reason they concocted this body out of quasi and little journalists and other people who lack the professional qualifications to be true journalists.” Sabbah castigated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other leftist organizations for allowing themselves to be “duped” by Fatah, which he said led to the “arrogation of the union” “Hundreds of present and former union members have been shocked to see the PFLP stoop to this level in order to obtain a piece of this sinful cake.” A third journalist, Gibreil Saadeh described the new union as “lame horses replacing dead horses.” A fourth, Hisham Sharabati of Hebron, likened the union elections with union elections in tyrannical Arab states where everything is arranged beforehand. “As I was watching the plenary session of the union elections on the Palestine TV, I remembered how things are done in one of the very nationalistic Arab states, run by a vanguardist party in whose orbit other parties revolve. I sought refuge in Allah from the evil of Satan, and beseeched the Almighty to keep us away from the un-straight path that would take us to a similar situation.” Criticisms Critics, who hail from various ideological backgrounds, are citing numerous flaws in the Fatah-dominated journalists union, which they say would render the union decidedly illegal and un-representative of Palestinian journalists. One of the most delegitimizing flaws is the issue of membership which critics claim is manipulated rather brazenly in order to ensure that the union remains permanently in the hands of the Fatah organization. “They grant memberships to people who have little or nothing to do with the profession of journalism as long as they go with the flow. It is like allowing blacksmiths to join the doctors’ guild or allowing shepherds to join the engineers’ union,” says Nael from Ramallah. “Besides, it is conspicuously clear that a large number of members are actually members of the various security agencies. They are journalists in name, but security officers in reality.” Nael’s remarks don’t seem to be exaggerated. The membership of the journalists union has not been sifted for many years, and many of the people previously registered as journalists in the early or mid 1990s are no longer practicing the profession, assuming they had ever done that in the first place. “There is irrefutable evidence that many of the estimated 300-400 people who voted as a bloc for the new union were security cadres. This is why this is a fraudulent election, it is an affront to the profession of journalism, it is an insult to Palestinian democracy, it is even an insult to our dignity as a people.” Additional criticisms are directed at the hasty manner in which the elections were conducted. For example, a complete list of union members was never released to allow objections. Similarly, numerous aspirant members, many of them independents or unaffiliated with Fatah, were not accepted for unknown reasons. Indeed, hundreds of practicing journalists who have joined the profession, have been unable to find their way to the union due to its protracted paralysis and dysfunction as a result of political manipulation by the Fatah organization. Furthermore, the Fatah organization, in collusion with the erstwhile leftist organizations, refused to allow elections to take place in places other than Ramallah, apparently in order to ensure that the process remains under their tight control. This apparently prevented many journalists from outlaying regions such as Hebron and Nablus from taking part in the elections. Another scandalous flaw blemishing the new Union is the so-called quota system which means that the union seats are divided among PLO factions in accordance with an anachronistic system dating back to the early 1980s. Pursuant to this system, Fatah receives the lion’s share of the seats, followed by the PFLP and its former ideological sister, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), followed by a myriad of small factions, most of which have few followers and supporters on the ground.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are totally unrepresented in the new body and the same applies to dozens, if not hundreds, of independent journalists. In other words, the new union, very much like the old one, will not reflect the present political reality in occupied Palestine where probably over half of the population don’t view the PLO as their “sole and legitimate representative.” This fact, say some journalists, might prompt journalists who are unaffiliated with PLO to establish their own representative body instead of risking being marginalized by the Fatah-dominated body. None the less, there are those who would rather give the new union the benefit of the doubt, at least for the time being. “Let us look at the half-full of the proverbial glass. The old union had been virtually dead from time immemorial. This union is not going to be an idealistic union, but let us wait and see. Maybe something good might come out of it,” says Awadh Rajoub, a West Bank correspondent for al-Jazeera.net Arabic service.
“An ailing union is better than a dead one, isn’t it?” | 
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment