AMMAN: Former Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad has announced he will submit a list of independent candidates in the May 22 elections.
Fayyad’s decision was revealed in a front-page interview on Tuesday in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds.
Speaking to the newspaper’s editor, Mohammad Abu Libdeh, Fayyad said that his list “will be of independent faces that have had a presence in Palestinian life.”
He called for a national effort to strengthen Palestinian steadfastness with authority and justice.
Fayyad, a former International Monetary Fund official and finance minister, said that the rules of the game must change. “We need to insist on our right for equal treatment and we should stop expecting salvation through Washington.”
Image: Majdi Mohammed / AP
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks after a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah oon January 22, 2020.
President Mahmoud Abbas has guaranteed that at least seven seats of a new legislative council will go to Christians in the next elections in the Palestinian territories.
Planned for May 22, the elections are hoped to be the first since the militant Hamas movement won the last vote over Abbas’s Fatah party in 2006.
The measure would give Christians, who make up about 1 percent of the population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, an outsized representation on the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
Palestinian President Abbas gives Christians outsize voice in new legislature religionnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from religionnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.