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However, last week, with the deadline for registering candidates just hours away, Fatah leaders were getting increasingly worried about problems in many districts. In Nablus, the second largest city, former Mayor Ghassan Shakaa defied local Fatah leaders and formed his own slate, arguing that he would do better as an independent. In the largest city, Hebron, little-known Fatah candidates seemed poised for defeat by independents. With these reports in hand, the party leaders called Abbas, who was in Washington at the time, and urged him to cancel the election. Abbas quickly agreed and a terse statement said the vote was being postponed to give reconciliation with Hamas another chance. Fatah has been burned twice before by heading into elections despite warnings of impending defeat. Hamas scored heavily in 2005 municipal elections and a year later won the parliamentary poll. Still, the latest decision reflected badly on Fayyad and Fatah's leaders, said Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki. "The public is likely to view the cancellation as an indication of a major failure in state and institution-building, a process led by Fayyad and his government, and an indication of the fragmentation, panic and lack of leadership within Fatah," he wrote in presenting his latest poll this week. The survey indicates that while Fayyad is increasingly popular as prime minister, he'd trail behind most other hypothetical candidates in a race for president, according to Shikaki, who polled 1,270 respondents with an error margin of 3 percentage points. For now, Fatah's only hope is to keep Abbas in power as long as possible, otherwise Fatah and the Palestinian Authority "will be in big trouble," said analyst Hani Masri. "Both might collapse."
[Associated
Press;
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