Alum Leads Delegation Assisting Palestinian Elections

As the Palestinian Authority holds its first parliamentary election in a decade on Wednesday, Jarrett N. Blanc ’97 is leading a delegation of Western electoral experts to provide technical assistance to the Palestinian Central Election Commission (CEC).

As the chair of the delegation sent by the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), Blanc is advising both the CEC and the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)—the Palestinians’ 132-seat parliament—on a host of technical issues including GIS mapping, information and database technology, and voter registration and education.

“We are providing three types of assistance to the Palestinian Authority,” Blanc, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in government, said in a phone interview from Gaza. “We are working with the CEC on a variety of technical issues, with the PLC on drafting electoral laws, and with the donor and diplomatic community on reform and making sure they know where their money is going.”

The Jan. 25 election is the third major election in the Palestinian Authority’s history. The first, which elected members to the charter PLC and voted Yasser Arafat in as president, took place on Jan. 20, 1996. The second, which brought Mahmoud Abbas to power following Arafat’s death, was held on Jan. 9, 2005.

“The first two elections were reasonably credible and received pretty good marks in terms of adhering to international standards,” Blanc said. “[But] the series of local elections that have been held over the past 13 months have been somewhat more problematic.”

The upcoming election has been complicated by the participation of militant Islamic group Hamas, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union. Hamas is fielding at least 115 candidates for the 132 seats, according to the BBC. Palestinian leaders have claimed that engaging Hamas in the political process is essential to demilitarizing it, but the Israeli government has claimed that Hamas should not be allowed to participate until it acknowledges Israel’s right to exist.

According to experts and recent news reports, Hamas is poised to make a strong showing in the polls against Abbas’s dominant Fatah faction, which Arafat founded in the 1950s. The militant group has performed well in local elections over the past year, taking control of many important municipal councils. A poll released last Friday by an independent Palestinian firm, the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, put Fatah and Hamas in a dead heat, with Fatah taking 32 percent of the vote and Hamas taking 30 percent.

Blanc said that the political situation in the two weeks has calmed considerably, despite Hamas’s participation and the political fallout from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke on Jan. 4.

“At the beginning of the month, things seemed to be deteriorating and we were quite worried,” Blanc said. “But after Eid in the middle of January, President Abbas made a speech saying that the elections will go on and we have seen virtually no violence of any kind since then.”

Despite the fact that Israel has lifted many restrictions for the election, many Palestinians living in Jerusalem will find it difficult to vote, according to Blanc. Six polling places, capable of handling 6,300 voters, will be set up at post offices in central Jerusalem. Blanc estimates that there are some 120,000 Palestinians living in that area, the vast majority of whom will have to travel to the outskirts of the city to vote.

“All Palestinians will have an opportunity to vote, but it’s not a convenient opportunity,” Blanc said. “They will have to travel long distances and cross checkpoints.”

There are also hundreds of more easily-accessible polling sites for the residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

IFES constrains its missions to providing technical support to the Palestinian Authority; its primary goal is not to assess the credibility of the election.

“We’re not here to tell them what to do,” Blanc said. “We’re here to implement the decisions that they do make.”

Many groups have sent large delegations of observers to monitor the elections, Blanc said. The European Union plans to send 200 observers, and the Carter Center and National Democratic Institute will send 100 observers. The latter delegation will be led personally by former President Jimmy Carter.

The IFES mission will not end on election day. Blanc, who has worked on policy and electoral issues in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo, said that his group is committed to working with the Palestinian Authority well into the future.

“First, we’ll be here for the counting and tabulation of the ballots which is often one of the flashpoints in a transitioning democracy,” Blanc said. “We will [also] continue to provide long-term technical assistance to the CEC and the diplomatic community.”

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.