Egypt Analysis: Reviewing This Week's Elections

A new EA correspondent writes:

This week, there were elections to the Shura Council (Maglis il Shura), the upper house of the Egyptian parliament (Maglis il Shab). A third of the 264 seats will be decided by voting, with 44 more seats appointed by the President.

According to the Supreme Electoral Committee, 446 candidates are running in the elections: 115 belong to political parties whilst the remaining 331 candidates are independents, including some members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The elections will not be under national court supervision or international monitoring, as Gamal Mubarak, General Secretary of the Policy Committee in the National Democratic Party, declared at a recent press conference: "This issue is governed by the law and the constitution which made it possible for civil society organizations to monitor the elections."



A journalist from Al Masry Al Youm claims that reporters were not allowed to enter the voting booths in Kafr il Zayat. He entered the voting booth as an "Egyptian citizen" to cast his ballot, only to find that --- as the elections officially began at 8 a.m. --- ballot boxes "256, 257, and 258" had already been filled with signed votes.

Mehwar confirmed in live coverage that representatives of candidates were prevented from entering the polling areas. The official authorisation (tawqeel) given by national security authorities to the representatives were disallowed in some cases.

Another reporter from Al Shorouq, speaking on the programme "Sabah Dream",claimed that in Besyoun in Asyut, representatives for candidates were not allowed to enter the voting booths to check that the elections fulfilled the legal requirements. Police arrested an opposition candidate, for "causing disruption" and for the sake of security, when he tried to get his representative to observe the local elections.

The reporter  added that he managed to obtain 200 ballot papers before entering the voting booth.

In the Behira constituency, a journalist from Al Masry al Youm --- again reporting "Sabah Dream" --- that an opposition candidate (from the Muslim Brotherhood) was shot by police. The injury was not life-threatening.

An Egyptian citizen from Masr al Gedida (New Cairo) was refused the right to vote, despite showing her identification card, because authorities could not find her name on the voters' list. Having lost her voting card, she was determined to vote and was advised that she could do so with proof of ID.  However, after a venture with officials throughout the building in a vain search for her name,  the disappointed woman returned home.

Whilst this determined citizen could not vote because of an innocent mistake, many others will not be bothering to turn up at all.  Only two out of eight citizens interviewed in a Cairo programme said they would vote.

That may not be surprising: when the Shura Council building went up in flames on 7 July 2009, few people interviewed on evening programmes showed concern for the welfare of the members of the Council.