On the ninth day of Fatah party congress held in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the secular party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday began the vote count for the election of its Revolutionary Council after delays.

The ballot count for the Revolutionary Council, its legislative body, was delayed for about 30 hours, and came a day after the semi-official results of the Fatah Central Committee election were announced. The reformists won a majority in the committee, the executive body of Fatah.

Monir Salama, the sixth Fatah congress executive director, told Xinhua that the reason behind the delay of the vote count "was not done in purpose, but because preparing for the process itself was difficult and complicated and needs more time and more efforts."

Salama expected that the votes count to elect 80 new members for the Fatah parliament will go smoothly, but will take at least 30 hours, adding "as soon as we finish the process of votes counting, we will announce the results in an official statement probably on Friday evening."

All together 617 candidates are running for 80 seats available in the Revolutionary Council.

Earlier on Wednesday, 11 senior Fatah leaders in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip announced their resignation to protest the results of Fatah internal elections. Among the 18 elected to the 23-member of the Central Committee, only two are from Gaza.

Ahmed Nasser, a member of the higher committee of Fatah in the Gaza Strip, said he and his 10 colleagues resigned because the internal elections were "unfair and unclear."

However, Zahareya el-Agha, a central committee member who belongs to the Fatah old guard, told a news conference in Gaza on Wednesday that the resignation of the 11 members in the Gaza Strip" is made according to Fatah law and has nothing to do with the results of the recent elections."

"The higher committee is congratulating President Abu Mazen and the new elected central committee members for the confidence they received from the congress members. We put our resignation in the hands of the new leadership to do what it sees is proper," said el-Agha.

But Nasser, who has failed in the central committee election, told Xinhua that "during the elections, our votes had gone to other people and some candidates had been elected twice," referring to manipulation and chaos.

Some 400 Fatah members to the party's congress were prevented by Hamas security forces, which control the Gaza Strip, from traveling to Bethlehem to attend the congress.

Nasser said Fatah's decision to go ahead with the conference despite the absence of the Gaza-based members "has infringed the Gaza members' right of voting."

"There are some people who controlled the movement and abducted it," Nasser said, refusing to reveal the names of the Fatah officials that he accused. Some of the Fatah delegates in Gaza were able to vote over their cellular phones or via e-mails.

Meanwhile, senior Gaza Fatah leader Ibrahim Abu el-Najja said in a statement faxed to journalists that the Gaza Fatah higher committee appealed to President Abbas, also chairman of the congress and chief of the committee, to observe the elections "to consider those who were deprived from voting."

"No one had contacted or called any of Gaza congress members and they were not even given the opportunity to practice their right of voting like their colleagues," said Abu el-Najja, adding that "some of those who were not able to vote are members of the congress preparatory committee."

During the congress debates on finding a mechanism for banned Gaza congress members to join the electoral process, it was proposed that Gaza gets one-third share in the central committee and the revolutionary council. However, the proposal was rejected by West Bank members.

Fatah kicked off its long-awaited congress on August 4, the first in 20 years since the movement held its fifth conference in Tunis in 1989. It is also the first one held on Palestinian territories.

(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2009)