EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak has set October 18 as the date for launching the country’s “free” parliamentary elections. Voting has been divided into three stages to ensure compliance with an electoral law adopted in July, requiring a magistrate to be present in each of the country’s 15 000 or more polling places. Voters will choose 444 of the parliament’s 454 members, and the remaining 10 are appointed by the head of state. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), which has been in power since 1981, controls more than 90% of the seats in the current parliament. The opposition, which has just 13 seats, alleged massive vote-rigging in the 1995 elections, and the press has for several weeks been highly sceptical over the chances of a fair vote ahead of the coming election. – AFP