A recent poll found that almost all Palestinians — 95.5 percent — believe there is corruption in Abbas’s government. Nader Said, a veteran pollster, surveyed 1,200 people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last month. Among Gaza residents scoring the performance of the territory’s Hamas rulers, the figure was 82 percent.
“This is the highest rate I have ever seen in all the polls I have done,” Said, who runs an independent polling agency called AWRAD, told The Associated Press. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.
The breakdown of trust is likely linked to overall dissatisfaction with Abbas’s performance after 10 years in power, twice his lawful term.
Critics say secretiveness among Abbas and his advisers and a lack of responsiveness have fanned suspicions among the public that the political elite enjoy privileges and special deals at the expense of everyone else.
For example, the government hasn’t submitted annual budget reports for mandatory audits for four years, effectively preventing scrutiny of how millions of dollars are spent, said corruption monitor Aman, the Palestinian branch of Transparency International.
Read more at Times of Israel
