The Palestinian elections committee in Ramallah announced the PA presidential campaign officially opened Saturday for all seven candidates and would end on 7th January two days before the actual vote.
A number of activists started hanging photos of the candidates on the streets while a number of them said press conferences would be held soon.
The most prominent candidate, PLO executive committee chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, was asked on the continued detention of Ahmed Sa’dat, PFLP secretary general in a PA jail in Jericho under American-British supervision, and he replied that he did not wish for such a situation to continue. However, he said, what would happen after his release … “this is what I have discussed with PFLP leaders”.
Meanwhile, independent candidate Mustafa Al-Barghouthi said he could beat Abbas. Speaking during an election rally in the town of Dura, 45 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem, Friday, Barghouthi said Palestinians shouldn't trust "biased and tendentious polls," an allusion to recent opinion surveys, which gave Abbas a substantial lead over Barghouthi and other candidates.
"The results of the municipal elections proved that all the opinion polls we had seen were false. So don't trust these polls, instead I urge you to work with me to create a new leadership that will feel and identify with the pains of our people, not the pains of others."
According to the latest opinion polls, Abbas remains the most favorite candidate with 43% of respondents saying they would vote for him on 9 January.However, Barghouthi's campaign seems to be steadily gaining momentum with nearly 18% of respondents supporting him. Palestinian analysts assessed that Barghouthi would become a serious threat to Abbas if Palestinian Islamic movements decided to support him.
