MIDDLE EAST: Dr Barghouti went looking for the youth vote yesterday, Michael Jansen reports from Ramallah/Bir Zeit.
The lions of Manara Square at the centre of Ramallah seem bemused by the plentiful posters plastered on the buildings all round and the many banners suspended overhead. If the images of the two main candidates were translated into votes in Sunday's presidential contest, the frontrunner, Mr Mahmud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, would be running scared.
While Mr Abbas, who assumed the chairmanship of the Palestine Liberation Organisation upon the death of Yasser Arafat, may have larger and more professionally produced posters, those of his chief rival, Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and legislator, are more numerous. His face is everywhere, looking serious, stern and presidential. Yesterday, he made a bid to capture the youth vote by holding what could only be classified as a campaign seminar at Bir Zeit University, the premier Palestinian institution of higher learning located on the edge of Ramallah in the West Bank.
Dr Barghouti sat behind a huge desk in front of blackboards in a lecture hall crammed with students, professors, journalists and television teams.
After urging all Palestinians to "exercise their democratic responsibility and right to vote", he stated, "Abu Mazen belongs to the old system. We need to change. Abu Mazen is stuck with Oslo", the defunct 1993 accord with Israel which he helped broker.
Palestinians expected this deal, signed with great ceremony on the White House lawn, would end the occupation and usher in an independent Palestinian state within five years.
Oslo failed, prompting the Intifada. "I am different," asserted Dr Barghouti, "I will not restart negotiations on the basis of Oslo or agree to new interim agreements which may not be implemented."
Students questioned him closely about the financing of his well-organised, impressive, expensive campaign. He said he received donations from supporters but could not match the funds Abu Mazen secured from the mainstream Fatah movement and its wealthy supporters abroad.
He also made the point that Abu Mazen is the favourite of the West, which speaks of him as a "moderate" and "reformer", and of Israel, which facilitates his passage through checkpoints and obstructs the movements of other candidates. "I have been beaten and arrested," asserted Dr Barghouti.
Observers from the European Parliament accompanied him to yesterday's other campaign events in the northern West Bank to make certain he was not blocked at checkpoints.
When he visited Gaza on Wednesday he said he was greeted by thousands of people who "are dying for change. I wish we could have one more month to campaign."
He announced he has achieved several objectives so far. He has convinced Palestinians that they have options other than Fatah and the Islamist Hamas movement, he has stirred the silent majority and encouraged them to participate, and this has influenced the policies being enunciated by Abu Mazen.
A confident Dr Barghouti expects to be elected in spite of surveys which show him to be trailing Abu Mazen by 40 per cent. But if he loses this election, he will be the "leader of the democratic opposition, stand next time and win".
Ms Rand George Abduh, a student of media and political science, told The Irish Times, "I will vote for Dr Barghouti. He is becoming more and more popular in the days before the election, particularly among young people. He is the only candidate who is coming to universities."
Ms Julie Samara, from the English faculty, observed: "He's a good man. During the Intifada he did good things. His Palestinian Medical Relief Committees helped many people."