Official announcement of election results delayed amid speculations (dpa)

Middle East News

By Pakinam Amer
Jun 12, 2007, 22:59 GMT

Cairo - The official Higher Commissioner for Elections announcement of mid-term election results for Egypt's Shura Council was delayed Tuesday, leaving observers to wonder about the possibility of last minute alterations.

Allegations of fraud, vote rigging, collective voting and bribery circulated following Monday's election for the Shura Council, the consultative upper house of Egypt's parliament. Its duties are limited to ratifying constitutional amendments, treaties and bill proposals.

In some constituencies, winning candidates were informally alerted to results, and preliminary results for at least 60 of 76 contested seats were reported in the first edition of Wednesday's al-Ahram state-owned newspaper that appeared on newsstands at midnight.

The legally banned Muslim Brotherhood group ran 19 candidates despite a fierce clampdown on its ranks.

Sources from the Higher Commissioner for Elections (HCE) said that results were announced unofficially, but that 'a winner is not winner until HEC's head pronounces his name himself.'

Estimates said around 42 ruling National Democratic Party members won, as did one left-leaning Tagammu and one independent. Run-offs will be held for 12 seats, reports had said. Muslim Brotherhood candidates had evidently lost all their races.

Giza, where two Muslim Brotherhood members were contesting elections and where violent incidents occurred during polling and some supporters were barred from entering ballot stations, seems to have represented a problem since there was no mention of Giza in preliminary results published by the state-owned newspaper.

According to HCE sources, the official announcement of the results was postponed to Wednesday afternoon because results were still coming in. The HCE had originally said a press conference would be held Tuesday morning to announce results.

Reporters were left to wait for more than six hours as conflicting statements were issued and commissioner employees started leaving for home.

The delay caused speculation among observers that NDP members could be arguing among themselves, as several NDP candidates had contested the same seat, creating friction within the party.

Complaints of fraud, rigging, collective voting and bribery flowed into monitoring and human rights offices, some reports said.

On Monday, election day, polling stations were illegally closed in Giza where Muslim Brotherhood candidates were on ballots. Heavily armed security officers in black uniforms barred voters from entering the stations, telling them that 'voting has been cancelled,' witnesses said.

In areas where NDP candidates ran, supporters were allowed in without voting cards, and were allegedly allowed to vote several times in a row.

The contests turned deadly when a candidate's supporter was shot dead in Sharqiya province and more than six others were reported wounded in a firefight.

The banned Muslim Brotherhood members got the lion's share of harassment where their supporters were manhandled by security police and forcefully banned from voting. Even before elections began, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the NDP would win.

Muslim Brotherhood candidates from the second and third constituencies of Imbaba and Giza claimed that three ruling National Democratic Party members had won their contests.

Sayed Saleh, a Brotherhood member from Oseem town in Giza said he is certain that only about 40 people managed to vote for him out of the town's 17,000 registered voters. He said word of mouth held that the NDP candidates got around 5,000-6,000 votes each.

Candidate Mohammed Fiki said people in his town were claiming more than 92,000 people voted for the NDP contestant in their constituency. But he refused to believe it.

'This is crazy talk,' Fiki, a Brotherhood member said. 'During vote counting, it was a big mess. People were allowed in and out without supervision. The whole scene was like a vegetable market. It was just mad.'

'Victory? What victory?' the usually calm Mohammed Habib, deputy to the Brotherhood supreme guide, said. 'Rigging and fraud constitutes 100 per cent of the process.'

'No Egyptian will believe that the Muslim Brothers who garnered 88 seats and 2 million votes in parliamentary elections did not manage to get more than a thousand vote for all their candidates,' said Saad al-Husseiny, a Brotherhood member of parliament.

The Shura Council elections reportedly had a much lower turnout than was officially announced. The independent monitoring body Shayfeen.com and others said no more than 5 per cent of Egypt's 23 million eligible voters participated.

'There was an effective boycott,' said Ghada Shahbanadar, founding member of Shayfeen.com.
Shahbandar said reported violations included a lack of ink to identify those who voted and a lack of privacy during voting.

These elections were the first since the People's Assembly passed key constitutional amendments at the demand by President Hosny Mubarak, including limiting judicial authority over ballot stations. The move was seen as a defeat for Egypt's judges who had decried it.

'There was no judicial supervision whatsoever in these elections,' said judicial expert Nasser Amin.

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights reported 'thuggery' against members of the press covering the elections.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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