With the announcement that elections might take place on January 24, 2010 in the Palestinian territories, IFES, in cooperation with Internews and the Palestinian Central Elections Committee (CEC), hosted a one-day workshop to help local journalists improve their coverage of the poll and news related to it. On 4 November 2009, twenty-five reporters from radio, television, and electronic news agencies came from throughout West Bank to participate.
Two representatives from the CEC, Suhair Dwaik and Anees Abu Sbaa, explained the election process starting with the calendar of activities that must be carried out in order to have elections. They then discussed the election laws of 2005 and 2007, and the registration of voters and candidates. The journalists asked some difficult and interesting questions related to the process of elections, the impact of the internal conflict on the process, and the issue of voting in Jerusalem. The discussions that followed were very lively as the trainers tried to answer the questions as best they could given the political nature of many of them and the independence of the CEC was underscored. They also discussed the role of the judiciary in the election process and in disputes, oversight, and clarifying issues through legal rulings.
The trainers made it clear that their work is procedural, which is implementing the Presidential Decree that was issued on October 23, 2009 stating that elections would be held on January 24, 2010. However, they carefully alluded that Hamas’ banning of the elections in Gaza might lead to the postponement of the elections.
The journalists were quite happy with the usefulness of the workshop and asked to hold more on this subject so that they can better cover the process. Fares AlMalky of Wattan TV said, "it is a great workshop; the session was full of information” and Abeer Kilany of Gama TV concurred, saying, “the information we got is very importation especially for the next period, which makes it easier for us to help people to know the election process."